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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23594449">If he refuses (I still go on)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck'>dawnstruck</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alien Biology, Angst, Body Dysphoria, Canon, Canon Compliant, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Kidfic, M/M, Mpreg, Not Beta Read, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Supportive Lance (Voltron), intersex!keith, slowburn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:55:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>51,069</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23594449</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So Keith is good at that, at waiting, at longing. No one would think that patience is a strength of his but perhaps that is because, more aptly put, it is actually his weakness. For when Keith waits, it seems, he always waits a little too long. He always misses the right moment.</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>Maybe, he muses in retrospect, that is because the right moment never existed in the first place.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith/Shiro (Voltron), brief Shiro/Adam, brief Shiro/Curtis, mentions of Lance/Allura</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>454</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>490</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. preface</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello again. This is the first VLD story I have written since the series ended. I didn’t watch the last season, I mostly skimmed the one before that. I lost my investment in the story, due to the deteriorating writing, but I kept loving the characters. I had the idea for this sitting in my drafts since the finale destroyed Sheith, but I was so disenchanted that I was sure I would never actually write it. Then Corona rolled around and I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time and some manic energy. To give you a rough idea, I wrote the first 16k of this within 12 hours. Not drafted, not outlined. Wrote and edited and polished. That was two days ago. I have written even more since.</p>
<p>This story destroys a little more before it gets around to fixing things. It spans pre-canon, canon, and then delves into several events post canon. Due to this, there are things I only glance over. There may also be several inconsistencies or errors, especially when it comes to the last two seasons. Again, I didn’t really watch those, and I couldn’t be arsed to do the research for that. And also because apparently not a lot of it made sense in the first place. So whatever.</p>
<p>The first half of the story is from Keith’s POV, and then it switches to Shiro’s POV after chapter viii. It's going to be a long ride before we get to the meat of the story. Aka the Mpreg part. I have added the tag intersex!Keith for simplicity’s sake, even though Keith does not exactly identify as such. Questions of sex and gender will dealt with as needed, but please keep in mind that this is still fantasy, and Keith wars with his literal alienation in general. </p>
<p>Updates will be every Wednesday and Sunday. </p>
<p>In the edits below you can see Muraoka Hideo as Shiro and Jin Akanishi as Keith.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “I</em>
  <em>f he refuses, I still go on </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Till the heaven and earth are gone </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Fortune favors the brave they say </em>
</p><p>
  <em> My bravery could not convince me to stay” </em>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onsz1TbU-j4"> Black Dub <em> – Surely You Were Meant to Be Mine </em> </a>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Not yet, Keith tells himself because - despite the momentary calm - war is no time for lovers, no matter what the great epics seem to claim.</p><p>Not yet, he told himself when Adam had just walked away and Shiro asked Keith to accompany him to the launch instead, but Keith was young and awkward and a cadet and didn’t want Shiro to just brush him aside because of that.</p><p>So Keith is good at that, at waiting, at longing. No one would think that patience is a strength of his but perhaps that is because, more aptly put, it is actually his weakness. For when Keith waits, it seems, he always waits a little too long. He always misses the right moment.</p><p>Maybe, he muses in retrospect, that is because the right moment never existed in the first place.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. i.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Keith grew up different in too many ways to count.</p><p>He grew up a desert child with a father who spent too much time staring at the stars and listening to foreign frequencies.</p><p>He didn’t have a mother, and he understood death, he understood divorce, but those were not the reasons why his family was not whole.</p><p>“She loves us, but she had to leave,” his father would say, but there were no pictures of her, no name, and none of his dad’s colleagues seemed to have known her.</p><p>“You got her eyes,” his father would say, fondly and a little sadly. There was a phase when Keith went through great trouble to look into the eyes of every woman he met, in the hopes that there might be a hint of purple in them.</p><p>Purple, it turned out, was not a common eye color, and a few years down the road Keith learned to avoid eye contact anyway. He doesn’t remember when he stopped looking.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>They cover sex ed in class early on, and the teacher explains all about genitals and procreation.</p><p>“My mom said you don’t have to be a girl or boy if you don’t wanna be,” Jeannie from two seats next to him says.</p><p>“That’s right,” Miss Dobson agrees. “Some people decide they wanna be something else. Sometimes, they just wanna be called a different name or pronoun, and sometimes they want to get surgery, too, because it makes them feel better.”</p><p>Danny throws his hand up. “Can you be both a girl and a boy?”</p><p>“Yes,” Miss Dobson says. “Some people feel like they are both, or like they are a boy one day and a girl the next. And there are even a number of people who are born with both the sexual organs we just discussed. That’s called intersex.”</p><p>The class at large giggles at the word and Keith, who previously hadn’t been paying much attention, sinks lower in his chair.</p><p>“Can people like that still have babies?” Jasminda wants to know.</p><p>“Hmm,” Miss Dobson hums, thoughtfully putting a finger to her chin. “Usually, not all the parts are fully developed, so that can be a problem when they want to make a baby. But it really depends on each individual person. And, nowadays, there are a lot of doctors and scientists who can help with that. For example, my own mom couldn’t have a children at first so-“</p><p>Under the table, Keith squeezes his legs together and sets his tablet aside, so he doesn’t have to look at the illustrations of the human internal sexual organs.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Keith’s father dies before Keith can get answers to a lot of things. </p><p>He never learned his mother’s name or where she went off to or why. He does learn that his birth certificate lists the name of a woman that never existed. He learns that his father was a criminal, in a way, because the only explanations are that he either made up someone’s identity, or that he kidnapped Keith as an infant.</p><p>At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Keith is orphaned, is abandoned, is alone. Keith is placed in the system.</p><p>He’s given therapy at first, to carry him through his grief. They think Keith must be angry that his father is gone. They keep saying that. <em> It’s okay to be angry. </em> But Keith is not angry. He is accepting. His dad saved lives, at the risk of his own. His dad is a hero.</p><p>When Keith tells his therapist that, she gives him a tight-lipped smile. There is something like pity behind her wire-rim glasses. He doesn’t like that. She writes something down on her tablet because she is meant to make observations about him, help him somehow. But she is the one who got it all wrong.</p><p>“Dying for someone is not something to be afraid of,” his dad once said when he took Keith out into the desert to star-gaze. “Living for them can be so much scarier.”</p><p>Keith hadn’t understood it then, and he still doesn’t. But he thinks he might, one day. He holds on to that.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>When Keith is eleven, he is placed into foster care for the first time. </p><p>It’s not too bad. It’s an older couple, their own children moved out and away. <em> Empty nesters, </em> Mrs Santino calls herself and her husband.</p><p>Keith has a hard time wrapping his head around it, that some people love children so much that they would even willingly let strangers into their own home. His dad has always been a little leery of strangers in general. And his mom… Well. She hadn’t even wanted her own child.</p><p>That’s what one of the older girls at the shelter had told Keith. Because she wasn’t orphaned, she still had both of her parents - they just didn’t want her around. And if Keith’s mother was still alive but never came for him? That must mean that she didn’t want him either.</p><p>“Maybe there’s something wrong with you,” the girl had said. She’d been digging her fingernails into her forearm, and there were angry red trenches all over her skin, like she did this a lot, every day.</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Keith had retorted, but somehow he suddenly wasn’t so sure.</p><p>“There’s always something wrong with you,” she had said, her eyes and nails fixed on her arm until she finally drew blood.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Over the years, Keith learns to keep a list of all the things that are wrong about him. Some of them he finds out himself. Others he is told by foster families, therapists, classmates, teachers.</p><p>He’s called withdrawn and stand-offish. Shy. Stoic. Aloof. Autistic. They say he has trouble relating to others, even though he thinks that no one ever properly tries to relate to him. Whenever he wants to explain his reasons for doing something, he is brushed off. Then he is mouthy. Uppity. Belligerent and volatile, whenever he gets into fights, or fights just get into him.</p><p><em>It’s okay to be angry,</em> they used to say. But now it’s all <em>You need to learn how to control your temper.</em></p><p>There are other things that make him different. In school, somehow word gets out that he is in foster care, and someone spreads a rumor that it’s because his parents are drug addicts.</p><p>There’s that thing that happens to you when you are already ostracized. When the rest of the world has decided that they don’t want you, there is nothing you can do to make yourself fit in. First, Keith is made fun of because he is short and small. Then because he has a growth spurt that makes him tall and lanky. They ridicule the color of his eyes and the way he eats his lunch and how he sometimes stumbles over his reply when the teacher calls on him.</p><p>Keith goes to a good school because there is legislation that demands every school needs to take in a certain percentage of charity cases. So Keith got lucky, but he is not a good student, not in the way that teachers want him to be.</p><p>Because he is strong and fast, but he is no teamplayer, so his grades in P.E. are mediocre. He likes books and reading, but he struggles putting thought-out analyses on paper in English Literature. He’s good with money and numbers, but eventually there aren’t very many numbers in Maths at all. </p><p>When Keith is fourteen, he starts thinking he might become a mechanic, because he likes tinkering and cars, and because he thinks it’s a job where he won’t have to talk to a lot of people. He won’t need very good grades for it, so he can just graduate and get a job and an apartment right away, without having to worry where he will go once he ages out of the system. </p><p>When he was thirteen he was still halfway thinking that maybe he could become a firefighter, like his dad. But he has put that out of his head by now. Keith is many things, and he has the one-inch-thick file on record to prove that. But he is not a hero.</p><p>When Keith is fifteen, Takashi Shirogane walks into his life and changes everything.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this was not a lot to go on yet, but I want to firmly establish Keith's character and his relationship with Shiro in the context of this story before he delve into any new stuff. I hope that doesn't get to tedious. It will take several chapters before we reach the part of the story that concern the events post-canon.</p><p>Nevertheless, please let me know what you think! I hope I left you wanting more. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. ii.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Glad to see there are still a few people around who enjoy Sheith and/or my writing. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented. Now, on to the first chapter that actually contains some not-so-subtle pining.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Life at Galaxy Garrison is everything Keith never dared to dream of.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His father had always been fascinated by the stars, and Keith had shared that fascination. But it had never seemed like an option for Keith, whose teachers described him as an average student at best, a nuisance at worst. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith gets in due to exceptional sim scores and Shiro’s recommendation, despite the fact that Keith stole his hoverbike and rode it without a licence and got the police involved. Despite the fact that Shiro should look at him with degrees of pity and contempt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For the first time in his life, Keith has a perspective. The Garrison houses and clothes and feeds him. If he works hard, he will even be awarded a small stipend. And, at the end of it all, he will graduate and have a job guaranteed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>James Griffin is there, too, and that puts a bit of a damper on things. They are both enrolled as fighter class pilot students so they share a lot of their courses, but both of them know better than to start any shit and risk getting reprimanded or even suspended.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Keith avoids him, avoids most of his peers, really, because competition is fierce among students, and Keith doesn’t play well with others anyway. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead it is Shiro who spends time with him, maybe out of obligation because he was the one who brought Keith here, or maybe out of sympathy because he can tell that Keith has not a single friend.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Shiro is busy - a recent graduate, already junior officer and teaching assistant, who has to juggle office hours and class prep on top of navigating a pretty new relationship with his boyfriend Adam and making sure he stays on the good side of the other professors and officers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a lot of bootlicking, grasping for the stars,” Shiro warns him because he must know that this is something that Keith will eventually struggle with. “This is still a military institution. There is a hierarchy here and people don’t like others going against it. And make no mistake, both academics and soldiers can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe it. I once skipped Muller’s History of Space Travel, and five years later he refuses to recommend me for Kerberos.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Kerberos Project is something that still rests within the cradle of the Garrison’s space exploration department. It's the love child of Professor Holt who dreams of going out there, farther than any other space mission ever has, and taking samples from the edge of the universe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The project is still in diapers, but Shiro is already working on being taken into consideration as the mission pilot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One day, that could be you,” Shiro tells Keith encouragingly, because Keith has already begun to beat some of his records in the flight simulators. “Maybe, in a few years’ time, you’ll reach moons and planets we haven’t even heard of yet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe,” Keith says shyly and cards his fingers through his fringe. He knows he is a good pilot, but there are other areas he is severely lacking. His teamplay is still shit and space travel is not a one-man show. He can’t really imagine anyone trusting him enough to steer them towards Earth’s moon, much less into the great unknown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s much easier to see himself as one of the fighter jet pilots, the ones that demand agility and nerves of steel. There’s still some teamwork there because you need to coordinate over the comms, but Keith would be alone in the cockpit and he’d only have himself to depend on. After all, that’s what he is used to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Although, he admits, with a sidelong glance at Shiro who is sipping iced tea and has his eyes closed against the warm sunlight falling through the library window. Maybe that has changed.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There are many things Keith learns at the Garrison. He learns how to steer shuttles through asteroid showers and how to safely dock onto a space station. He learns that the cantine’s chili is sure to give him a stomach ache and that, if he gets there early enough, the communal showers will be empty. He learns that, with a little more training, he might be able to hold his own against Shiro in their sparring matches. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He learns that he likes how Shiro smells, covered in fresh sweat that makes his shirt stick to his pectorals and the small of his back. He learns he likes the feeling of being pressed down onto the gym mats with Shiro’s larger body above him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He learns that, when he gets changed out of his gym clothes afterwards, his underwear will be damp with something other than sweat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He learns that falling in love can be a one-sided thing. And that pining for someone who’s with someone else is a small but severe kind of hurt, like a papercut that no one else can see but that makes you painfully aware of the things you shouldn’t touch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith is not stupid. He knows this has no future, because Shiro and Adam are a solid deal. They share an officer’s apartment and sometimes have Keith over for dinner, and Shiro will kiss Adam’s cheek while they cook and Adam grabs Shiro’s ass, and they laugh together and flirt casually, and Keith has to bite the inside of his cheek because he feels like he is intruding but never turns down the invitations.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So he tries to talk himself out of it, all rational. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is just puberty and hormones. Shiro is handsome and funny and kind and smart. He is Keith’s role model and, even worse, Keith’s only friend. Keith is hyper-fixating on the one person who will give him affection, like that year he got bounced around between four different foster homes until he was begging his social worker to take him in, because she always had a smile and a lollipop for him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is just that. Keith does not even feature on Shiro’s radar, for too many reasons to count. Even Adam does not seem to care how much time they spend together, even though sometimes Keith wonders whether he suspects something.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just a puppy crush. Those are fleeting. Keith will grow out of it, like he grew out of his last set of uniforms. Like he grew out of his dislike for mushrooms. Like he grew out of thinking his mother might one day return.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And anyway, he is happy. Happier than he could have imagined three years ago, when his dreams of the future were limited to a local auto shop instead of the Milky Way. He doesn’t need more than this, just Shiro’s praise for a good mark on a test and Shiro coaching him through a difficult math problem and Shiro letting him ride his hoverbike through the desert and taking him to grab breakfast pancakes at the diner and-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Shiro.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith is a desert child. He was born into starvation.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m intersex,” Keith bursts out, a few scant days after Adam has broken up with Shiro. After Shiro told Keith about the muscle atrophy that would slowly eat away at his dreams.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They are out in the arboretum dome, surrounded by plants that have no right growing out in the desert, and they hadn’t even been talking about anything in particular, so Keith’s confession seems rather non-sequitur.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro looks at him and blinks in surprise, probably wondering what that has to do with him saying they should check out the new Indian restaurant downtown. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m just, I-” Keith flounders because he has never had to tell anyone before. It’s a side note in his medical file but it’s a private matter, and Keith’s ID lists his sex simply as male, because that’s what his dad raised him as and that’s what makes sense to Keith.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because he has a dick, and that’s normal, that’s what he sees when he looks down at himself, and he never ventures any further than that, only perfunctory touches when he has to wash himself between his legs. He barely even knows what it looks like down there because it’s not like he got a lot of privacy in the communal showers to do any real exploring.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he doesn’t want to explore. He doesn’t jerk off in the middle of the night, like his roommate sometimes does. He doesn’t slip fingers into the wet heat between his folds, even when he feels himself throbbing with arousal. He just… ignores it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But now he told Shiro and he has to explain. So he takes a deep steadying breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m intersex,” he repeats, even though he never truly identified with that word, because it’s so clinical, so direct, like something out of textbook.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Certain herbicides have been found to cause hermaphroditism in amphibians, Professor Darling had explained to the class when they were all dissecting greenfrogs. It is believed that the chemical atrazine induces aromatase and promotes the conversion of testosterone to estrogen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So I… I know it’s not the same, but…,” Keith purses his lips. “I know what it feels like to think of your body as your enemy. And I… admire you for still working towards what you want anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Shiro looks at him with a certain calm that had not been there since he had taken the engagement ring of his finger three days ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> want, Keith?” he asks, and his tone is so similar to when he had told Keith that they needed people like him at Galaxy Garrison.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And now Keith looks at Shiro, at his cheekbones and his ink black hair and at the Cupid’s bow Keith wants to press his lips against, and he thinks of Adam and Kerberos and Shiro finally no longer having an anchor weighing him down, and says, “I dunno.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Under other circumstances, Shiro would have invited his boyfriend to the day of the launch. But, since Adam is out of the picture, he asks Keith to be there instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t mean it that way, probably, but the phrasing still stings, like Keith is just an afterthought, a replacement, a placeholder until something better comes along.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith is just shy of eighteen, still a student, and Shiro outranks him. It’s not like anything could happen between them anyway. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe the distance will do them good, in that way. Shiro will return just in time for Keith’s graduation, and in the meantime Keith will have grown into someone who is mature enough for him. Someone who doesn’t follow him around like a puppy, starved for love and affection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a lot going on on the launch pad, Keith being introduced to Professor Holt’s wife and daughter, the girl Katie declaring that, next year, she will also enroll at the Garrison, Matt reminding her to not get into too much trouble. Keith stands back a little, watches Coleen Holt kiss both Matt and Shiro on the cheek, telling them to take care of themselves, Shiro promising to not steer the ship into an iceberg, and then suddenly it’s time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sam Holt kisses his wife and then Matt and Katie join for a big bear hug, everyone groaning and laughing and joking with tears in their eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro pulls Keith aside and slips his arms around him so easily that Keith can almost forget how rarely someone has touched him like this. Keith melts into it like a candle in the face of a flame.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eat well and sleep well and break some more records for me,” Shiro tells him, his mouth right against Keith’s ear, as though it were a secret between them. “Don’t butt heads with Iverson or any of your professors. Or your classmates.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Patience yields focus,” Keith says and his voice only shakes a little. He thinks he can feel Shiro smile against the shell of his ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is the first time Keith gets to say goodbye to someone he loves. He tries not to think of losing his father to the fire, or losing his mother to whatever was more important than her newborn son. He keeps his eyes closed to ignore the sting in them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a moment, Shiro’s hold around him tightens. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Watch the stars for me,” he says and finally lets go. Keith resists the urge to hold on to him. Instead, he just nods, not trusting his voice to break.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cadet,” Shiro says, snapping into a salute, but throwing in a wink as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith returns the salute, no matter how mechanic it feels. This used to be a joke between them. Because Shiro is the only authority Keith truly respects, but he is also the only one who never abused that power. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Officer,” Keith says and immediately clamps his mouth shut again because he can feel his lower lip tremble.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s gaze softens.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll be back before you know it,” he promises and Keith trusts him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro breaks his promise after only four months.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The loss of the Kerberos mission is announced to the student body and the public at large on a regular Tuesday afternoon. Keith is just coming out of his Engineering lab when he hears it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At first, the words themselves don’t make sense. Then he reads through the email sent out to everyone, hastily scrolling through explanations that transmission contact was lost three days ago already, and that a piloting error is to blame, most likely due to Officer Shirogane’s health problems that previous medical evaluations had not found to be a great risk factor. Chief Scientist Professor Doctor Samuel Holt, his son Junior Engineer Matthew Holt, and pilot Officer Takashi Shirogane have been declared dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith sits in his dorm, back to the door, and still doesn’t understand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can’t be dead. He can’t have made a piloting error. How could there be a piloting error when, just last week’s update on the mission, had declared a successful landing on Kerberos? What mistakes were there to be made at that point, and by someone like Shiro to boot?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How can he be dead?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Those are the questions Keith yells into Iverson’s face, in the middle of the canteen. He’s thrown a plastic tray at him already, is causing a scene in front of everyone, but Iverson just stares him down, tells him to pull himself together and that he should speak to their school counselor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s okay to be angry,</span>
  </em>
  <span> is what his last grief counselor had said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Keith lets himself be angry. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later that same day, he is expelled for insubordination and attacking a superior officer. He packs a bag with the few things that are truly his, his knife, his papers, his civilian clothes, and the key to the hoverbike that Shiro left him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He refuses the offer for a cab to take him downtown. Instead, he jumps onto the hoverbike and, without even a glance over his shoulder, turns his back on his home of the past three years, a blaze of red metal and dust.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That part feels good, in a way. Like Keith is leaving instead of being left. But that’s the only part.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the middle of the desert, when Keith has found his way to what little is left of the house he grew up in, he realizes that anger only gets you so far.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What follows is depression, red beans eaten straight from the can, cutting his fingers on the sharp metal because he has neither pots nor cutlery. It’s stealing a bottle of Jack Daniels from the gas station because he is too young to buy alcohol but old enough to be left to his own devices, without anyone caring what happens to him now that the Garrison has washed their hands off him. It’s getting absolutely shit-faced because he has never been drunk before and doesn’t know his limits, puking his guts out next to a lonely campfire and feeling like absolute death.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He lost his father to the fire, he remembers, as he lies on the hard ground, feels the almost scalding heat on the side of his face that is turned toward the flames. And now he has lost Shiro to the stars.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stars above him are cool in comparison, distant and blue. Keith wants to pull down every single one of them, wants to throttle them, wants to ask them how they dare to shine after what they have done, but he just squeezes his eyes shut against their mocking twinkle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s okay to be angry, the grief counselor had said, but Keith anger has run out and he only feels empty and listless now. All the hot air has gone out of him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Patience yields focus, another voice says in his head, and Keith’s eyes snap open again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And we have circled right back to the hurt. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. iii.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is basically the first two seasons of the show condensed in only 2k. Originally, I meant to publish this story as a oneshot, that's why these early chapters feel like tiny unsatisfying bites that only glance over important moments. However, I promise the later chapters will be longer and more fulfilling.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith knows that this is not what Shiro meant by patience.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro meant calm and concentration and collectedness. He did not mean obsession. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But here Keith is, living in his tiny shack, salvaging what he can from the ruins of his father’s house. There is something that has drawn him to his place, something more than just nostalgic childhood memories.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somehow, he makes it liveable again, though his definition of life has become a little skewed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He eats what he can get, conserves, stale bread, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs. He puts the survival classes he took at the Garrison to good use, hunts rabbits and lizards and anything else that’s still borderline palatable. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rigs up a primitive water collection system, installs a generator, and somehow gets his father’s old machines running again. He has a little money from his inheritance, but he takes small jobs as well, construction, deliveries, yard work. Some of the people in town have a vague memory of him, calling him Kogane’s boy, their fondness for his late father overriding their initial suspicion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s the old pity again, people not knowing his full story, thinking he must have aged out of the foster system and is now returning to the only home he ever knew, trying to find a place for himself. They think he is a little insane for it, because what can the desert offer him but heatstroke and chapped lips?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But they indulge him, let him have old spare parts and food that is about to expire. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For the first time in a long time, Keith remembers what his father told him about how living for someone can be scarier than death. This is not quite that, though, he knows. This is just survival.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If someone had asked Keith what he hoped to find during his months in the desert, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He wasn’t looking for strange carvings on a cliffside. He wasn’t looking for indecipherable transmissions on his radio. He wasn’t even really looking for Shiro.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet, he found them anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He also found a handful of other Garrison cadets, a mystic mecha lion, a space castle plus the princess of an almost extinct species, an intergalactic war, and just frankly a lot more than he bargained for.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith has always been good at thinking on his feet. He takes what life throws at him. And if that is Shiro, alive and mostly whole, in exchange for a hundred near-death scenarios.... Well, he’ll gladly take that deal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time everyone has found their lions and Princess Allura declares them Defenders of the Universe, Keith has been awake for over forty hours and his brain is tired enough to suspect that everything up till now has been one big hallucination.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That there is no such thing as Voltron or Galras or Alteans. That Shiro is not truly back. That maybe Keith just got bit by a rattlesnake and is suffering the consequences in the form of a crazy fever that is sure to kill him by morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But then he sleeps and he wakes, and Shiro is still there, with his hair greying and scars littering his torso, with an alien prosthetic for an arm and haunted shadows in his eyes whenever he lets his thoughts drift off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before the ‘piloting error’ - and fuck the Garrison for desecrating Shiro’s legacy like that -, Keith had sometimes imagined something childishly romantic, like Shiro stepping off the ship, helmet under one arm, and Keith running up and kissing him, for all the reporters and their flashing cameras to see. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, after the transmission loss, he dreamed of Shiro having listened to Adam and never having taken the mission in the first place. Or, better yet, of Shiro never having come to Keith’s school to recruit him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, Keith longs to kiss the palm of Shiro’s metal hand and draw his fingertips over the scar on the bridge of Shiro’s nose. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But there is no time for that. Shiro is still healing from too many hurts, and there is always a new battle to be fought. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith lets it become his new normal, throws himself onto the training deck even when the rest of the team is off doing something else. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He likes the others, as much as he can. There are not a lot of opportunities for him to get close. There’s that rivalry that Lance goes on about, and that seems to have tainted Pidge’s and Hunk’s perception of him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s hard for Keith to get a handle on all of that. He was never good with people in the first place, and his time in the desert has not exactly improved his social skills. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But teamwork is vital for forming Voltron. Trust is vital.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anything to make sure that Shiro is safe.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Pidge turns out to be Katie Holt and, for one strange moment of elation, Keith thinks that she might be a little like him, trans or intersex or gender fluid. But then she reveals that it was just a ploy to get into the Garrison to find information about her father and brother, and Keith tries not to dwell on it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He never really had the chance to talk to someone about questions of gender, and his infrequent internet searches at the Garrison had only overwhelmed him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He tries to put it out of his mind instead, because it’s not like it’s a pressing matter, compared to everything else. But there are moments Lance calls him a weirdo and a freak over little things, when he makes fun of Keith for being body-shy and not wanting to get changed in front of him, when he takes offense to Keith talking to the princess as though they were now rivals in love as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s so absurd that Keith wants to laugh. Has he become so good at hiding his feelings that none of them notice, or are they really that oblivious? Or maybe do they think that Keith is the ridiculous one for setting his sights so high and believing that his feelings could ever be returned?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Patience, though. Patience.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>None of them truly has a head for love at the moment, apart from Lance maybe, and even he mostly seems to be going through the motions some days, empty flirtations to distract him from the great terror that is the war surrounding them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead, Keith works on rebuilding his friendship with someone that is a little more sure-footed and level-eyed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is second-in-command of Voltron, as decided by no one but Shiro, really. Keith doesn’t think he is cut out for it, certainly doesn’t like the way Shiro sometimes speaks to him as though Keith would be leading Voltron soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith tells him he doesn’t want to hear about any of that. He doesn’t admit that, in part, it’s because of the nightmares that have begun to plague him, a purple haze of marching Galra soldiers and half-imagined memories of his mother leaning over his crib.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith keeps all these thoughts to him, staring at his Galra knife that has no right to be in the possession of a regular human.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One night, when Zarkon has somehow found them yet again, Keith packs a bag of necessities and sneaks down into the hangar. If Zarkon has some sort of connection to Keith because of their fight or- or because Keith is different, then Keith cannot risk the lives of his friends by staying with them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everything goes differently from how he had planned it. The princess is there, her own worries adjacent to Keith’s, and the two take one of the shuttles to get away from the castle. They almost die, but Red saves them, and Coran ends up praising Keith for having such a deep connection with his Lion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then they find the Blades of Marmora.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Ironically, it is something of a double-edged sword to finally have the certainty that he is half-Galra.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is relief there, the kind that he associates with when he first told Shiro about being intersex. A long-kept secret out in the open. A band aid ripped off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But that relief is overshadowed by the rest of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hunk cracks jokes that try to break the tension, but end up rubbing salt in Keith wounds. Lance keeps looking for clues of Keith’s heritage and then declares that they should have known all along, because Keith’s eyes are purple, because he is freakishly strong, because he actually likes weird Altean space goo.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pidge looks constantly on the verge of wanting to ask Keith whether he knows anything, anything at all, about the whereabouts of her father and her brother. As though the Galra were a hivemind and Keith could just hack into all that knowledge. As though he had deliberately kept the information from her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Worst of all is Allura. The brief time of bonding he had with her during their escape in the shuttle is destroyed the moment Kolivan informs the others that the Blades have decided to aid Voltron because Keith is now unofficially one of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She barely even looks at him anymore, and when she does it is with suspicion and hurt. She looks at him and sees those that killed her mother, her father, her entire people. She sees the enemy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And what is Keith meant to say to convince her otherwise? Pleading his case had never worked with any of the teachers or foster parents who saw the worst in him. It was better to shut his mouth and accept the judgment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coran, funnily, is much more accepting. He has known many Galra in his life and knows that he cannot generalize an entire species as evil, and he promises Keith that the princess will come around eventually.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Shiro... </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is the one Keith had worried about the most. Because Shiro is the one who has suffered terrible harm under the Galra, he is the one who still wakes from nightmares or breathes himself into a panic when a painful memory is triggered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet he is also the one who hugs Keith and combs the fingers of his left hand through Keith’s hair, telling him it’s okay to cry when Keith is trying to hold back the tears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The grief counselor, strangely, had never told him that. Maybe she thought that a child would know to cry without being told. Keith hadn’t, though.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, he curls into Shiro’s embrace and cries.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith moves on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His body has always been an oddity to him, has never felt quite right, and now he has an explanation for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Blades welcome him, despite the fact that he does physically fit in with them, too short, too skinny, no purple skin or fur, no large ears, no tail, no scales. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the beginning, they seem to think of him as some sort of mascot, despite the fact that he beat many of their best fighters during his trial. It takes several missions of fighting side by side that they understand he is just as worthy of any of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is also from them that Keith learns a little more about his identity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because there are Galra who are neither male nor female, who do not refer to themselves as intersex, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>alththalith,</span>
  </em>
  <span> a word that Keith whispers to himself over and over again as he lies awake in his cot at night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a third sex, rare even among the Galra, but not rare enough that there aren’t a few of them among the Blades.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And it makes sense, of course it does. Because there are so many variations on biological sex among terrestrial species, why wouldn’t there be among aliens as well?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe this is something that should make Keith feel even more insecure about himself because it is just another reminder that he is not fully human.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead, it is calming. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is, quietly, thrillingly, exciting. Because some of the Blades flirt with him when they can smell what he is, because he is alththalith, and a Paladin of Voltron, and pretty to boot, as Regris tells him with a hissing laugh that has Keith blushing to the roots of his hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Regris is alththalith as well, popular among the Blades, a bit of a flirt himself. He is a little older than Keith, certainly more experienced, tells Keith to enjoy himself while they still can, because who knows when it will all be over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Keith stutters and mumbles and confesses that there is someone he likes, which is something he has never admitted out loud before, and Regris grins and tells him to better go for it then. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith thinks that maybe, maybe he will.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Of course that is when Shiro disappears.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I feel like each season of Voltron could be summed up with "a bullshit thing happens to Shiro to throw a wrench between him and Keith" and that makes me sad.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. iv.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We have reached the part of the show where, in my humble opinion, things started to go downhill, both in terms of plot and character development, as I have already discussed with some readers in the comment section. As such, a lot of the canon events are only kind of glanced over and I might have forgotten to mention some relevant Keith-centric things. Sometimes I think my brain is deliberately trying to black how the  clusterfuck that the later seasons became...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Losing Shiro for the second time is even worse than the first, though Keith had not thought that possible.</p><p>Keith drifts through the debris, trying to mend his heart. This is something he has had to do many times in his life now. Someone ripping a piece of him away, and him having to replace it. He wonders how long it will take until his entire heart is made up of nothing but makeshift patches, like some sort of Frankensteinian monster, alive against all laws of nature.</p><p>The others grant him a period of denial but then quickly grow impatient, as though Keith were looking for a misplaced glove instead of their leader and friend.</p><p>The only one who understands this kind of pain is Pidge, who still relently looks for clues on her lost brother and father. Unfortunately, however, that drive also makes her most vocal about wanting to move on. She cannot afford to waste thoughts on Shiro when her true family could be just within reach.</p><p>In the end, it is Coran's words who end up getting through Keith’s mania, when Keith has returned from yet another fruitless search and stumbles out of Red and into the hangar instead.</p><p>“I know it doesn’t feel like it right now,” Coran says, with a composure that is quite unlike him, as his gaze moves over the five lions. “But you are not the first who has loved and lost someone. And you won’t be the last.”</p><p>In that moment Keith realizes that, despite how much Coran chatters all day long, he actually knows very little about the older Altean’s life before the war. And he understands that, if the war does not come to an end, there will always be someone new who is grieving. </p><p>And that’s when Keith knows that he has to move on.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>They all vy for the chance to pilot the Black Lion, as though they had just been waiting for a chance to replace Shiro. When they fail, they urge Keith to give it a try as well, even though his entire being resists the idea of it, like his tongue and stomach revolting against being fed salt water.</p><p>“Please no,” he whispers, when the lion begins to hum around him only moments later.</p><p>“Voltron is alive,” Allura declares, a sigh of relief on her lips, even though now Red is the one without a pilot. </p><p>No one acknowledges the other truth of the matter, though. That, if Black has accepted Keith, it must mean that Shiro is truly dead.</p><p>And yet, Keith leads.</p><p>What else is there for him to do? Should he ignore Shiro’s wishes and turn his back on the war and the universe? Flee into yet another desert and wait for it to swallow him up properly this time?</p><p>He cannot do that. So he sets both his sorrow and his vengeance aside, and focuses on what is ahead of him. </p><p>It still feels wrong to be the head of Voltron, literally and figuratively. He misses Red, wonders if she misses him, but she has taken a fast liking to Lance, and Keith tries not to think about how even his own lion seems to have grown sick of him.</p><p>But Keith learns, and he grows. </p><p>He navigates the team dynamics, makes sure everyone is doing alright. He listens to Hunk’s concerns and Lance’s ideas, reins in Pidge’s ferocity and coaches Allura through difficult piloting maneuvers. </p><p>“Well done, Keith,” Coran praises him after another successful meeting with the empress of some tiny planet. Keith cannot help but notice that Coran has stopped numbering them since Shiro disappeared. “One grows with one’s challenges, don’t you agree?”</p><p>Keith sends him a smile in response, somewhere between grateful and pained, because it is still difficult, every day. </p><p>Keith would not have hesitated to die in Shiro’s stead. Living in his stead, he realizes, is much harder.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>When Shiro returns, he is changed. Hollow.</p><p>It is a lot like meeting Sven - looking at a man who should be so familiar but is so different instead. Only it is not just Shiro’s hair that is different, or even his accent. </p><p>It’s the way he holds himself like a beaten dog. Like Keith used to at that one foster home, always ready to duck away or shield his ribs and his face. It’s the way he sometimes goes very still, his gaze empty, only flickering to life again when he is spoken to, like a computer in sleep mode, trying to preserve energy.</p><p>The trauma, Keith thinks, because whatever happened to Shiro while he was gone, must have reawakened memories from his time in the arena. He’ll just need some more time to heal.</p><p>Black must know this, too, because she does not accept him back, acts as though she had never seen Shiro before. It quietens Lance’s anxiety about finding himself without a lion, but it does nothing to stabilize their team.</p><p>Shiro tries to lead from the castle, which is what the princess used to do, but he leads as though he were still at the head of Voltron, giving commandos for flight maneuvers, even though he no longer shares the intuitive mind bond. </p><p>It is… upsetting. Keith has to choose between doing what he knows it’s right or following Shiro’s somewhat erratic orders. More often than not, he ignores the orders. He takes full responsibility for it, redirects Shiro’s consternation from the rest of the team to himself.</p><p>The others don’t know what to do with this new tension within the ranks. Keith doesn’t know either, but he is pretty used to taking criticism left and right. He is not quite used to getting stern looks and long lectures from Shiro, to being cut off mid-sentence when he tries to explain a mission objective. </p><p>Shiro is just trying to feel useful after his position in the team has been upstaged. It’s an understandable reaction. Clinging on to some last bit of normalcy when everything has changed. Shiro has been fighting from the moment he was captured on Kerberos; he doesn’t know how to watch from the sidelines.</p><p>Keith… doesn’t quite break under the pressure, but it is a close thing. He tries to avoid it instead, checks in with the Blades whenever possible to see whether they can use him on a mission. They’ve had some setbacks lately and are short on members. </p><p>Kolivan gladly accepts Keith’s offer. Ironically, he is much more understanding of Keith’s different approaches to things, an almost avuncular indulgence to the way he shakes his head when Keith disobeys in some minor way. It’s never quite clear whether he makes exceptions on the grounds of Keith’s humanity, or just because of Keith himself, and Keith never dares to ask.</p><p>It reminds him uncomfortably of how Shiro used to treat him back at the Garrison, only chiding him gently, letting him get away with a lot of things. Keith misses that Shiro; he was fun to be around. </p><p>Keith is used to missing the past, though. He still knows there is only the way forward.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>After Regris’ death, Keith is distraught. Which is of course the reason why the Blades generally do not form close connections among each other. Maybe that is Keith’s human nature, though, hyper-social when compared to most other species, bonding quickly and intensely.</p><p>He and Regris had gone on many missions together. Regris had playfully taught him how to flirt, and had told Keith that, as an alththalith, there were no limitations to the pleasure their bodies could experience.</p><p>In a way, Regris was the older Galra brother that Keith had needed while growing up. A little like Shiro had been the older human brother Keith had needed.</p><p>Now, Keith has neither. Because Regris is dead among space debris and, instead of spotting the distress on Keith’s face, Shiro and the rest of the team welcome him with rancor on theirs.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Keith tries to explain, wringing his hands. “The mission-”</p><p>The others don’t care for his excuses. Their own mission could have gone disastrously wrong if Black had not called out to Shiro. That’s the bright side of it all, Keith guesses, that Shiro is back where he belongs.</p><p>Leave the math to Pidge, he had told Lance only a little while ago. But Keith is good with numbers, too. He knows that there is one too many.</p><p>It’s a decision he makes on the spot, out of desperation and necessity. Like a wild animal chewing off the limb stuck in a trap. He doesn’t know whether he is the animal or the limb. It hurts either way. </p><p>And it’s funny, really. Team Voltron had always disagreed with the Blade’s credo of sacrificing agents for the sake of the mission. Now they are proving yet again just how replaceable their paladins are.</p><p>There’s a group hug that feels more suffocating than anything else and, suddenly, Keith is twelve again and another foster family has called his social worker because they couldn’t handle a certain aspect of him. He is handed a trash bag to stuff his meager belongings in and then gets into the back seat of the social worker’s car, out of another Arizonian suburb. </p><p>There is no social worker this time, just Kolivan messaging him an okay for his early return, no car on the highway, just a lone shuttle among the stars. It’s a little bit like the day he had been expelled from the Garrison. </p><p>It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to cry.</p><p>Keith, for maybe the first time ever, feels completely numb.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>He likes being with the Blades.</p><p>He doesn't have to be a leader here. He doesn’t have to engage in conversation, if he doesn’t want to. There is a certain camaraderie among the Blades, but no true friendship. It’s a precaution, so no mission gets endangered by any undue loyalties between the members.</p><p>It’s just as well. Regris’ death is still fresh on Keith’s mind and he doesn’t care to lose another friend. That’s all he seems to do anyway - losing people, in one way or another.</p><p>In the privacy of his room, whenever he gets a moment to catch his breath between missions, Keith allows himself to watch recordings of the Voltron Show on his tablet. It’s loud and obnoxious and clearly one of Coran’s brain children, but Keith loves it nevertheless. </p><p>He laughs at Lance’s antics and the silly fight choreographies, at the dramatic one liners and predictable punchlines. He likes to reminisce about their early missions, when the full scope of everything hadn’t really sunken in yet, when it was still more of an adventure instead of an actual war. </p><p>He likes seeing their faces and hearing their voices, likes seeing that they are having fun and doing something to boost the morale of the people. He laughs at Allura’s imitations of him, at the way people have started shipping the Red and the Blue Paladin together because Lance is always making eyes at her.</p><p>He laughs until his laughter putters off, until the sound feels strange in his throat, until he notices that he is no longer laughing but has at some point started crying instead.</p><p>Keith misses his friends terribly and, what is even worse is knowing that they probably don’t really miss him back.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Haggar is a more terrifying enemy than Zarkon himself had ever been, and a more devious one to boot.</p><p>Her trap on Naxzela works exactly the way she must have orchestrated it, and Voltron find themselves caught by the gravitational forces.</p><p>“We’ll never penetrate those shields,” Matt tells him desperately over the comms, because even with the Blade of Marmora and the rebel forces backing them up, they simply do not have the technology to outdo Haggard’s well-laid plans.</p><p>Keith’s gaze drops from the force field surrounding Haggard’s to to Matt’s pale expression on the display in front of him. If they cannot break the shield, the universe will lose Voltron. Matt will lose his little sister. And Keith… Keith will lose his friends. </p><p>His eyes narrow. </p><p>“Maybe not with our weapons,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else, because this is not the kind of maneuver you get permission for.</p><p>“Wait, Keith! What are you doing?” Matt objects because, like Pidge, he is smart as a whip and must suspect what is about to happen. “Keith, no!”</p><p>It’s funny, in a way. During his entire time at the Garrison, Keith had never crashed his simulations the way Lance apparently had. He had made mistakes, had grazed obstacles and landed poorly. But he had never crashed and burned.</p><p>There’s a first time for everything. </p><p>Dying for someone is not something to be afraid of, Keith recalls his father’s wise words to him, and there is some truth to that, but Keith is still afraid, still cannot help but clench his eyes shut, his patchwork heart racing at the thought that, in a few tics, everything will be over, forever. </p><p>And that’s when Lotor appears.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Oh, hey, remember that near suicide maneuver that only Matt new about and that was never addressed in any way, shape or form, because Lotor was so much more interesting? Because I sure do and I am still salty about it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. v.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got her eyes,” his dad once said, but he failed to mention that Keith also had her chin and her nose and willowy build. Keith had expected as much, of course, because he didn’t exactly take after his father. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, he is staring into the face of a mother who towers above him, whose skin is lavender and whose teeth are sharp like canines.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I left you once,” Krolia tells him. “I’ll never leave you again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith does not trust that because he has been played variations of that tune before, only to be disappointed time and time again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then the Quantum Abyss happens and they are stuck together for an approximation of two Earth years and slowly the ice wall between them melts away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They talk about Keith’s father, the different memories they have of him. They talk about Keith growing up in the system and always wanting for a true family. They even talk about Keith being alththalith. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Krolia is good at reading between the lines, does not depend on Keith having to spell out every little thing to her. She knows that he was a Paladin of Voltron, but does not ask him to explain why he went with the Blade of Marmora instead. She knows that he spent half an eternity looking for Shiro and does not need him to elaborate on his motivations. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are many things she wasn’t there for, years that they will never regain. But she is here now and her hand is warm in his cheek, and she shares his dry sense of humor, and she never puts him on the spot and asks for forgiveness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It heals something inside of Keith. He had never much discussed the loss of his mother with his counselors because there hadn’t been a true loss. Just a gap where something should have been. People who are born blind cannot miss colors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet he leaves the Quantum Abyss with seeing eyes and a heart that is a little less ragged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He returns to Voltron with the certainty that, once more, he has missed them to death, while his disappearance was only the blink of an eye to them. But he is older now, and it shows. Lance gawks at his new height, his longer hair, his teleporting space wolf. Pidge and Hunk want to know everything about how time worked in the Quantum Abyss.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro tugs at Keith’s overgrown fringe, teases him for it not being military standard, welcomes him with a warmth that had almost been forgotten.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it’s like a drug. Keith had been abstinent, had been trying to wean himself off his addiction, but one hit and he is dependent again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He introduces his mother almost perfunctorily, explains how they met and skims over how they got to catch up over the past two years, and Shiro is attentive and polite and overtly happy for Keith.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m glad you finally found what you’ve been missing,” he says sincerely, and Keith wants to tell him right then and there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, he holds his breath and swallows the words back down, like he has so many times before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s him, isn’t it?” Krolia asks later, after she has carefully observed Keith and Shiro’s interactions. “You’re not gonna do anything about it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a war going on, in case you haven’t noticed,” Keith points out grouchily because she never chides him for taking the wrong tone with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Krolia just shrugs. “Didn’t stop me and your father.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And look where that got us,” Keith retorts and, even though it’s a low blow, doesn’t even feel sorry for it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s something wrong with Shiro. There has been something wrong with Shiro for so long and in so many different ways that, at some point, Keith stopped trying to keep track and simply accepted it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro was a moon that asteroids crashed into every now and then, leaving craters in their wake and changing the topography. Different and scarred but still beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then Shiro leads him out onto the space station that is filled with dozens of cryopods, each of them illuminated in eerie purple light and, hidden within them, an equal number of men wearing Shiro’s face, but younger, unblemished, like photographs of the officer who set out onto a journey to Pluto many years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clones, Keith realizes. Homunculi. Another perverse experiment at Haggard’s hands, another kind of weapon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because Shiro attacks Keith with a blank sort of fury on his face, like a rabid dog trying to maul everyone around him. There is no cure against rabies, Keith knows. Once you got it, you die.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would be a mercy killing. A justified death. Whatever this man raining down blows upon Keith is, it is no longer Shiro. Maybe it never has been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you,” Keith tells him, between gritted teeth, much unlike the many scenarios he had dreamed up in the past. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could have said it at the launch pad. Or in the desert shack, when Shiro awoke after over a year lost to space. He could have said it to him after finding him on that planet they crash landed their lions, or after the trial with the Blades. He could have said it every time he was about to lose Shiro, and every time he found him. He could have said it over the breakfast table, or on the star deck, or when they were playing cards on an uneventful night</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Keith missed those chances and so he says it now, a desperate attempt to break through the whatever frenzy has consumed Shiro.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For one moment, like catching breath under water, he thinks Shiro hears him. That Keith’s words are enough to dispel whatever power Haggar holds. It’s a fanciful hope. Naive. Keith had never believed in Santa or in the Tooth Fairy. He doesn’t know why he still believes in this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s features harden, smooth like the surface of a meteorite melted down by its entry into a planet’s atmosphere, singed by fire and gravity in equal measures. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just let go, Keith,” he growls. His voice is that of a stranger. “You don’t have to fight anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s not a fight, not truly. It is long hours sitting vigilant so Shiro may sleep in peace. It is a labyrinthine Odyssey with only one clear path. It is memories of Shiro’s laughter keeping him afloat as the real thing tries to drown him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s blade melts the skin on Keith’s cheek like a hot knife through butter, and Keith lets out a guttural cry, the taste of his own burnt flesh on his tongue. If he wavers, his skull will be cleft in twain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not calculation that makes him grab the forgotten bayard hanging from Shiro’s belt. It’s blind instinct. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In one downward slash, he takes off Shiro’s Galra arm, not with his Luxite blade but with the weapon that was always rightfully Shiro’s. Later, maybe, he’ll have time to think about the poetic parallels of it all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His body beaten and abused, Keith manages to get back on his feet. His cheek feels like he imagines placing one’s palm upon a stove top might, but he aches with the knowledge that he has hurt Shiro.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While everything else begins to burn, the fire has gone out in Shiro’s eyes, Haggard’s control over him seemingly lost, but it is a worthless kind of victory. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By this point, the destruction they have caused is too great and the space station has become unstable. All around them, Shiro’s likeness goes up in flames, a hundred times over. Keith keeps his eyes on the man in front of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You once told me you’d never give up on me, Keith had reminded him at the beginning of this fight. No one else had ever promised him unconditional loyalty. What can he do but return that dedication in kind?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows that they will die here. There is a certain inevitability about that, but an acceptance, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith is young still, but he has been prepared to die many times. It’s barely even fear anymore, just a shudder down his spine, like stepping outside on a cold morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grasps Shiro’s hand, human as it is, and holds on because he doesn’t know anything else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they fall, they fall together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Later, much later, when they defeat Lotor and free Shiro’s spirit from the astral plane to return him into a body that is not quite his, Keith gets the time to breathe and wonder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Does Shiro remember their fight? Does he remember what Keith told him? If he does, does he misinterpret it because of the preface Keith had to throw in, the ‘You’re my brother’?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You found me, he had said when he fell into Keith’s arms, like something sure and inevitable, and it felt like a confession all of its own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In all of space and across all universes, this is an unchangeable rule: When Shiro is lost, Keith finds him. Laws of nature bend beneath that force. Death shies away in reverence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet, if he does remember, Shiro gives no indication. He is a little scattered, a little all over the place still, but his smile is gentle and he doesn’t hurl hurtful things into Keith’s direction. It is not quite all that Keith had been hoping for, but it is better than nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With the Castle of Lion gone and only one healing pod left for Shiro to recuperate in, Keith’s own wounds and bruises must heal at their own pace. So on his cheek he wears a pink burn mark in return for his affection, forever edged into his very being. Sometimes he touches his fingers to the scar tissue and he thinks of his father and Pavlovian dogs and of burned children who should really learn how to fear the fire. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, Keith reminds himself, before everything, he had been the Paladin of the Red Lion. Fire is his element. Nothing can take that from him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You ran away,” Lance accuses him in front of everyone, as though Keith were a disloyal dog. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like the social worker who picked Keith up from the police station, when Keith was freshly fourteen and thought life on the street was his best shot at survival. He had gritted his teeth then, clenching his fists in his lap, while the police officer clicked his tongue in disapproval as though Keith had been offering blowjobs in back alleys instead of dumpster diving behind grocery stores. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back then, his track record had been long already and his file accordingly thick. He was a known problem case, a trouble maker. No one thought to check the bruises under his shirt that made him run away in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they are all space mad here, made snow-blind by the stars, and Keith is losing himself in rhetorics of regret.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You wanted me gone, the child in him rails, slamming doors and stomping feet. He hadn’t run - he had been kicked to the curb, and the Blade of Marmora took him in like a half-wild stray.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should’ve just stayed away,” Lance adds, adding insult to injury. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Had he not come to them in their time of need? Had he not warned them of Lotor’s betrayal before they thought anything amiss? Had he not piloted the Black Lion once more when Shiro could not?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Keith is not the final puzzle piece to complete their picture. He is a cog in the system meant to make the machine run. Necessary, but ultimately replaceable. The cogs grind and turn, and the clock keeps ticking, even as time seems to lose its meaning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Afterwards, he apologizes for his own hurtful words. Because they are his team, they are his friends, even if sometimes it feels more like theory than anything else. But he cannot let the wound between them fester, is scared of losing a limb to the infection. They had cut him off before. He will not let himself become obsolete again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He misses the time when friendship was having lunch at the canteen and recommending your favorite novels. That had been friendship with Shiro, back when there was only the Garrison curfew and dress code to worry about. Friendship in war is much rawer than that, stripped down to its essentials. A skeleton instead of a breathing creature.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith hopes that, at the end of this journey, peace will give them time to truly fill the blanks. That the broken bones will mend and his friends will be more than just comrades. He thinks that is something worth surviving for.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their return to Earth, when it finally happens, was only a matter of time, though it is a bit of a bittersweet experience for Keith. No one here waited for him. It would sting more if he didn’t have his mother looking out for him now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith can even find a certain humor in it, for example when James Griffin looks at him as though he were a mirage straight from the desert, or when he realizes that Iverson’s lazy eye must be a direct result of the punch Keith threw at him all those years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither James nor Iverson give him any shit, though, too focused on the issue at hand, too grateful for the appearance of the joint forces of the resistance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Holts are reunited, Lance gets to meet his family, Hunk finds out his parents are kept in a labor camp. Shiro stands in front of a memorial and grieves for the husband he almost had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then it is back to business as usual, everyone scrambling to figure out a way to keep the Galra from enslaving humanity as well, because war knows no weekends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thanks to Sam Holt’s earlier return to Earth and his timely warning of what was headed their way, humanity stands a fighting chance against the threat of the Galra. Keith does not dare to think what may have happened otherwise. Annihilation is the only word that comes to mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the Garrison is prepared. Keith’s former classmates have graduated and become fighter pilots in their own right. They no longer look at him with envy and derision, but instead respect his greater experience. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, their battles are a mess. Sendak is back, more vicious than ever. Sanda betrays them and then dies for them. With Keith back at Voltron’s helm, Shiro has remained planetside, aiding Iverson and the rest of the Garrison as they get Project Atlas underway, but of course he still has to be the one who goes off to face Sendak in one last desperate fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He almost dies, again, and Keith saves him, again. As many times as it takes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After the fall of the lions, Keith wakes up in a hospital bed, his mother by his side. He aches and itches all over, yearning for an Altean cryopad, but he has to content with human medicine instead, covered in bandages as he is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So they all recover, slower than they would like. Maybe that’s something they all needed. A bit of a break that forced them to rest longer than what it takes to just catch their breaths.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro comes to visit him often, plays cards with him or takes him out for walks in the meager gardens around the hospital. They have picnics in the sun room, either by themselves or with the other. It’s easy and almost tranquil. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes the sunshine will hit Shiro’s profile just so, or he’ll place his hand on Keith’s shoulder and not move it for a long while, as though it felt at home there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Krolia always sends Keith these knowing looks whenever Keith is absent-mindedly smiling to himself. He knows she thinks he should be making his move and does not understand his hesitation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not yet, Keith tells himself because - despite the momentary calm - war is no time for lovers, despite what the great epics seem to claim.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not yet, he told himself when Adam had just walked away and Shiro asked Keith to accompany him to the launch instead, but Keith was young and awkward and a cadet and didn’t want Shiro to just brush him aside because of that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Keith is good at that, at waiting, at longing. No one would think that patience is a strength of his but perhaps that is because, more aptly put, it is actually his weakness. For when Keith waits, it seems, he always waits a little too long. He always misses the right moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe, he muses in retrospect, that is because the right moment never existed in the first place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So. As you might notice, this is the chapter where things kinda start getting away from me. I had it already written, but then actually rewatched some of S6 and 7 stuff for details. Tried to come up with a timeline. Realized it's pretty much impossible. So I just kinda don't go into the whole "1,5 years of traveling back to Earth" because... yeah. That was just glossed over in the show. Shouldn't Pidge be an adult by now?? I have so many questions and no answers.</p><p>I have also made the mistake of skipping through S8, reading meta, and watching the superb analyses by The Sin Squad on YouTube. That was all of yesterday. I am now more and more certain that the mess that is Voltron cannot be salvaged. Because I am trying to make this fic as canon compliant as possible - but 95% of canon is just bullshit. So trying to pick up the loose threads and weaving it into something that /makes sense/ is way beyond my paygrade. </p><p>I know I said that this is a fix it fic and that I will address all the unfairness Keith went through. But I would have to rewrite all of canon for that. (Seriously, at this point I am so tempted to write my own epic space opera with decent romance and subplots and just. Arg.)</p><p>Basically, this long note is just a caveat that this fic will probably also not manage to satisfy all our needs for some REAL teamwork and bonding and healing. But hey, next chapter is also the last one that still covers canon, so for anything beyond that Keith is a free elf. \o/</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. vi.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Be with the ones you love,” Shiro orders them on their last day on Earth, and Keith watches the sun set beyond the desert, Kosmo by his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead of Shiro, it is Lance who comes to join him, in a ridiculous getup and speaking of ancient Altean courting rituals because he has a date with Allura and dinner with his family, and the envy is an old familiar bite in Keith’s stomach that can be ignored easily enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He waits until only the horizon is still aglow in shades of orange and gold, until the Milky Way slinks its way across the sky like a lazy river. He waits until he realizes that Shiro is not coming.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hey,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he sens him a quick message. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Did you forget me?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t reply for another thirty minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Altean pilot woke up,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he texts back. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We are having Romelle speak to her right now.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course. The captain’s orders do not apply to the captain. While everyone gets to relax and have fun, it’s business as usual for Shiro.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith wonders whether he should have taken a leaf from Lance’s book and asked Shiro out properly, instead of a casual ‘Stargazing on the Black Lion later?’ to which Shiro had replied with a distracted smile and a nod.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Anything I can do to help?,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he types back quickly, though he knows there is precious little. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No,</span>
  </em>
  <span> comes Shiro’s response. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Just enjoy your evening.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Keith looks down at his communicator for another long moment before finally putting it away. He scoots over, cuddles up against Kosmo’s shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just you and me, buddy,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Above them, the stars watch on in silence.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Standing at the edge of a gleaming pit of lava, Zethrid promises to kill Keith in retaliation for parting her from the one she loves, as Shiro can only watch on, powerless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It must be karma or cosmic irony. For had Keith not fought with similar vindication when he thought Shiro lost to him?  So he cannot blame Zethrid. Not for holding a grudge. Not for resenting being born a halfbreed. Not for desperately latching on to the only person who has always been there for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But if there is one thing Keith has learned over the course of his life, it is that people are always worth saving. Second chances aren’t a mercy. They are an ineffable right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith himself is not free of guilt. So many years into the war and he is still paying the price for his careless mistakes, like saving his own skin by freeing the monster that ended up taking so many Galra lives. He will never be able to repay that debt or undo the past.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he can influence the future.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Zethrid falls, he catches her. He catches her like he once held Shiro on a shattering space station. He catches her in a desperate bid for atonement of his own crimes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Killing is easy, he wants to tell her when he has pulled her back up the cliff with Acxa’s help. And dying even easier. But living - that’s what takes real courage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You okay?” Shiro asks him later when they have collected the rest of the Paladins and made sure that no one is seriously injured. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keith nods. His throat is still sore from when Zethrid choked him. “Just a little shaken.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You did the right thing, you know,” Shiro tells him. “I’m proud of you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith musters the strength for a genuine smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The last stretches of the war feel strangely disjointed, like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together. Maybe it is because they had all silently hoped that, after the battle on Earth, there was nothing more to be done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, at the end of it all, Honerva’s desperation to be reunited with her lover and her son, drives her to open up a rift in reality. But life does not work that way. People are not interchangeable - not even the ones plucked from parallel universes. You cannot lose one and try to replace them with another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith knows that. He spent months trying to fit his broken heart against that of a poor facsimile of Shiro.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course Honerva’s plan goes awry and, in her madness, she decides to destroy all realities instead. How can someone hurt so much, </span>
  <em>
    <span>love</span>
  </em>
  <span> so much, that they are willing to make the very fabric of the multiverse tear apart, Keith wonders, and a secret part of him aches in silent understanding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This, however, is not a problem that can be solved with fists or gunfire. Science and strategies fail. Team Voltron and the Coalition at large are powerless against this paramount danger. There is only one thing that can be done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Losing Allura is a strange experience, off-kilter and almost bizarre. Keith has never had to stand aside and just watch as someone willingly walked into their death. Usually, there was more of a rush to it. No time for a goodbye. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Allura kisses Lance and leaves Altean face markings on his cheeks. Keith’s burn scar tingles in sympathy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together with Honerva, Allura manages to stitch the universe back together. Daibazaal and Altea are restored.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, just like that, the fight is over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Almost more devastating than a war is the disorganization that comes in the wake of it. There are trading routes disrupted, entire planets thrown into disarray with the power vacuum the Galra leave behind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The work is not done yet, but it becomes more grafying when, instead of always having to kill and destroy, you get to look forward to building something up instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith shares his plans with Shiro, describes the ideas he has hashed out with Kolivan and Coran and Captain Olia. There is a lot to do in the universe, and Keith is eager to be a part of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go, be great,” Shiro tells him once more, just like when he did when he had sent Keith to search for the Red Lion. Now, he is sending him to his destiny again, but there is another implication beyond it. That, this time around, Keith needs to go and be great without him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Keith respects that. Shiro has suffered through much during the war, more so than the rest of them. He needs time to recuperate. His body still doesn’t feel quite like his own, and especially his Altean arm seems to trouble him more than the Galra one did, for whatever reason. He is still missing memories, will probably never regain them, and there is a kind of fragility that comes with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s just as well. He will keep working with the Garrison because they can do with bright young men who know more about the universe than the rest of them put together, and Keith will be able to see him whenever he has business here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he leaves Earth and returns only intermittently, always a flurry of action. As the official ambassador of the newly formed Intergalactic First Aid Relief, he meets with the board members of the Garrison, meets Shiro for lunch and sometimes even James for a coffee, listens to Pidge’s grouchy voice mails and checks in on Lance with the occasional text message.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like this, life happens in a flurry. It is difficult to really keep track of the passage of time when you are jumping between planets, some covered in snow and ice, others flourishing in their equivalent of spring, not to mention the stretches when Keith is navigating through the vastness of space that knows neither day nor night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before he knows it, almost a Terran year has passed, and their relief efforts finally show some real results. There are fewer planets that need immediate help, fewer people that are struggling. Keith feels something like an unselfish kind of pride whenever he gets the news that a recent mission of his team has come to fruition, that another place in the universe is slowly regaining its independence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Keith starts to think that, maybe, his time of waiting is over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the Galra ask him to be their new head of state, Keith declines. Leading may come easier these days, but he is not interested in macromanaging an entire planet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps he is what Daibazaal and her people would need after all this destruction - a ruler with no interest in ruling, someone who eschews power instead of chasing it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Keith thinks he deserves to be a little selfish, and the Galra deserve the chance to develop a true democracy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s incredible to think how much can happen in such a short time,” Shiro says when they are standing on a balcony on Altea, with the light of this solar system’s sun slowly disappearing behind the horizon. In the gardens below, juniberry flowers are closing their petals for the night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only a year has passed since Allura’s death, and under Coran’s guidance, the Alteans from Lotor’s colony are doing their best to honor her memory. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith is not sure whether Allura herself would have been too fond of the giant statue of her likeness. She was the savior of the universe, but also simply a young woman who loved small animals and sparkly things, who was kind and sometimes silly and who made mistakes but always tried to learn from them. That is not something that monuments can convey. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Romelle, luckily, is more artistically inclined, has started writing memoirs and epic poetry to try and capture what they had lived through, but words are fallible and always subject to interpretation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One year now, but in a few hundred they would be nothing but names in history books, bored students bouncing their legs under their desks in class, waiting for the lesson to be over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah…,” Keith agrees quietly. His pensive silence may have been a little too long, though, because Shiro seems to decide on a shift in topic and mood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turns toward Keith a little, his hip braced against the balustrade. His left hand comes up to gently tug at the dark strands of hair that are spilling over Keith’s shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You growing it out?” he asks, which is justified because it has been a while since Keith got it cut. Or rather, cut it himself, which is what he has done for most of his life. Usually with a knife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe,” Keith says, somewhat self-consciously. He’s never considered himself vain. He knows he is… not ugly, objectively speaking. But he has always been on that uncomfortable line between handsome and pretty that was too much of a reminder of his supposed intersexuality.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith knows he still has that unkempt orphan look about himself, like something out of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oliver Twist. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He brushes his teeth, and sometimes his hair, he owns deodorant and, when he runs out of body wash, he uses shampoo instead. One time, Lance had tried to introduce his eyebrows to tweezers and Keith had vehemently refused, just like he had refused conditioner, moisturizer and strawberry chapstick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Keith is not vain, not in the slightest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Shiro tugs at his hair one last time and says, “I like it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Keith </span>
  <em>
    <span>preens. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?” he asks, shyly running his own fingers through his fringe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Shiro confirms, even as his touch falls away. “I bet long hair would really suit you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith is not completely unused to getting compliments from Shiro. In fact, Shiro compliments him all the time and Keith thinks he remembers every little instance. Shiro has praised his combat skills and his leadership and the way he handles Kosmo. He has praised him for being the bigger man and ignoring Lance’s taunts from the earlier days. He has praised Keith for studying hard and breaking simulation records.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But complimenting his looks is a bit of a different thing. Back at the Garrison, Shiro had been careful about not overstepping any boundaries, especially since he was an instructor in a relationship with another instructor. But he had told Keith how well the cadet uniform suited him, back when Keith had just enrolled. And then, years later, he said the paladin armor fit him nicely and that red had always been his color. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But beyond that, Keith had been left wondering whether Shiro would even be interested in him like that at all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Shiro looked at him, it was always at Keith’s face, his eyes. His gaze didn’t seem to stray, not like Keith often found himself distracted by droplets of sweat on Shiro’s clavicle or Shiro’s biceps bulging when he lifted a bottle of water to his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Shiro touching him so casually and saying he likes his hair, all while they are standing on a balcony with the last colors of day fading on the horizon like withering plum petals, after they had a lot of Hunk’s cooking and a little too much Nunvill… Well. It means something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It has been six years since Shiro set out on the Kerberos mission. Six years during which Keith lived through an additional two. During which they went through many trials and tribulations together. Six years and then some since Keith first noticed his heart beating a little quicker whenever Shiro touched him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe I’ll grow it really long then,” he says, surprised by his own daring. “Just for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro gives a startled laugh, tiny dimples appearing on his cheeks, and in this light it is easy to mistake him for the young man he had been before the war dragged him away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that’s a first,” he says. “Keith Kogane doing anything just to please someone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not true,” Keith protests with a little pout. “Back at the Garrison, people sometimes called me tutor’s pet, because I was always in the library studying with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s grin widens, even if it’s difficult to tell with the falling darkness. By this point, the balcony is mostly illuminated by the bluish glow of Shiro’s artificial arm. And Keith doesn’t know these things but, quietly, he thinks that there is something quite romantic about the moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith is no good with flirting, probably. He’s never actively tried it. Lance’s overtures toward Allura and various other alien ladies had always seemed more blunt than suave, and Keith doesn’t care to try and imitate that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Regris has tried to teach him some, but a lot of that was focused on courting among Galra with very little overlap with human dating behavior. Shiro probably wouldn’t be very enthused if Keith went and killed some feral creature and brought him a souvenir like its pelt or tusks to impress him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How are things going on Earth?” Keith asks. He moves closer, just the tiniest bit, so his arm gently presses along Shiro’s left one that is not braced against the railing once more. “For you, I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>During dinner, Shiro had told them some about some of the developments within the Garrison, how they had been allotted new funds for the program to become more international, so that the planet could present a more united front instead of an amalgamation of hundreds of different countries. And Keith had listened, of course, but it’s not exactly the kind of information he had been hoping for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most of their conversation had been focused on talking shop. And Keith isn’t really free of blame either because, admittedly, there is very little he does beside working, and none of what he does in his spare time is particularly riveting. When he isn’t out on a mission, he is reading or sparring with his mother. Or Acxa. Or Zethrid. Or Ezor. Or some other agent of the Blade. Sometimes, he’ll take a jet and just go cruising among the stars or maybe practice some flight maneuvers, just for the enjoyment of it, not because he really feels the need to stay on his toes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith has changed, yes, but not fundamentally. Much of him will always remain that scraggly fifteen year old boy who chased Shiro through the desert.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Things are good,” Shiro says with a small bob of his head. “The dust has settled and I guess I’m settling down, too. Taking everything step by step. Sometimes I still wake up and expect to be out there, but you know. It’s getting better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He throws Keith a sideway glance, nudging him with his elbow. “What about you? Planning to slow down anytime soon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe,” Keith says. “I… think I’d like to go back to Earth soon. Make it a longer stay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Running out of steam?” Shiro asks, amused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just, I dunno. “Keith shrugs. “It’d be nice to be planet-side more often. Stay in one place for a while.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a bit of a fantasy. Keith hasn’t stayed in one place for a longer period of time since he was a child. He doesn’t know whether he could pull it off. Something about the thought itself scares him. He’s always been more of an air plant, never really growing roots. But still, he’d like to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s good,” Shiro says, encouraging. “It’d be nice to have you around more often. I bet the new cadets would get a kick if you showed your face every now and then. You’re some modern King Arthur to them, I think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith snorts. “What does that make you? Galahad?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro lets out a surprised huff. “I honestly don’t know enough about the Arthurian legend to judge that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s the most important of the knights,” Keith tells him because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> know. He’s always been a bit of a nerd himself, even if his interests veered more toward literature than computers. “He takes a place of honor at the Round Table that is forbidden to the other knights. And he is the one who finds the Holy Grail. He is exalted above all others.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tough job description,” Shiro jokes wryly, clicking his tongue. “Anything a bit more lowkey on offer? Like the baker or blacksmith or something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hmm, I could do with a scullery maid,” Keith muses, only to get another slightly harder jab in the ribs that makes him double over with laughter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The romantic mood is gone, he reckons, but that’s okay. There’ll be another chance.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the lions leave, it feels like the end of an era. Wistful and melancholic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s cathartic, too. Promising. If the lions leave, it must mean that Voltron is no longer needed. The universe does not need defending, but tending to. It needs to be nurtured and cared for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So the lions leave with one last mighty roar, like the gong of a great bell ushering in peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith thinks that this is the first loss he will not look back at with consternation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Mmm, what's that? Is that... an ending that is somewhat... ambiguous? Almost hopeful? Would be a shame if... someone were to add some "Where are they now" stillframes at the end of the series in which Shiro happened to marry someone else... Wonder how Keith would cope with that... </p><p>Tune in next chapter to find out. :D</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. vii.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Keith remembers, quite clearly, being seventeen and seeing the ring on Shiro’s fingers.</p><p>“Oh that,” Shiro had said and laughed. “Adam and I have been talking about it for a while now. We didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but we agreed to still get rings. He says it’ll at least be a deterrent for anyone who might wanna hit on me.”</p><p>This is worse than that. Because Keith sees the new ring on Shiro's finger and the sinking feeling in his stomach is very reminiscent of plummeting back to Earth in his lion.</p><p>“Curtis proposed,” Shiro reveals with a big smile when he notices Keith's wide-eyed stare, and for a very long moment Keith has to wrack his mind to figure out whether he even knows who Curtis is. </p><p>“We’ve decided to get married before the year is out,” Shiro explains. His gaze is on the horizon. “It's time I settled down. That was always the plan anyway.”</p><p>The memory of Adam is still there, but there is more to it than just that. There is a yearning for normalcy that Keith has never seen in Shiro. Shiro had always reached for the stars; it just seems that, like a child overdosing on sweets, he may have grown quite sick of them.</p><p>“How long have you been together?” Keith asks. Somehow, he manages to keep breathing around the lump in his throat.</p><p>Shiro looks back at him, blinks in surprise.</p><p>“Almost a year now,” he says.  “You didn’t know?”</p><p>Their gettogether on Altea had only been three months ago. Keith had gotten his hopes up three months ago. He swallows. The lump stays. “You didn’t tell me.”</p><p>“Well,” Shiro laughs. “You’re around so rarely these days. I probably meant to tell you but forgot.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith says, mustering up the phantom of a smile. “Guess it’s my own fault.”</p><p>“But now that you are here,” Shiro says, “I wanted to personally invite you to the wedding, of course. And whether you’d give me the honor of being my best man.”</p><p>Something small inside of Keith withers and dies.</p><p>“Shiro,” he croaks. The lump must have turned into a frog. “I’m- flattered, but. I’m not- not good with that sort of stuff. Parties and speeches and- and people. And I can’t even guarantee that I won’t be on some mission, so you… you really should ask someone else.”</p><p>The corners of Shiro’s mouth turn down, disappointed.</p><p>“It’s less about the party planning, really,” he says. “We’ve already got a professional for that anyway. I just… would really like for you to be by my side.”</p><p>Just at the wrong side of you, Keith thinks, hoping that the devastation won’t show on his face.</p><p>“I’ll think about it,” he mumbles, just to end that part of the conversation. He finds an excuse to end the conversation at large just ten minutes later, and then messages Kolivan to please order him off-planet within the day. </p><p>He doesn’t tell Shiro of his earlier-than-planned departure. Keith texts him later, tells him he has thought about Shiro’s request and thinks he isn’t cut out to be his best man. Shiro doesn’t push.</p><p><em> Thanks anyway, </em> Shiro replies. <em> I’ll ask Matt instead. </em></p><p>And once more Keith is replaceable in every way, both as a friend and as a love interest. Once more, he isn’t needed.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>In the days and weeks after, Keith begins to pick himself apart again, trying to find all his faults.</p><p>It’s an old pastime, one he thought he had finally outgrown, but now he is back at it and better than ever before.</p><p>Is it because of the early beginnings of their relationship that Shiro might see him as a child still, as some little brother, especially since Keith had called him in kind many times before?</p><p>Is it Keith's personality, just one aspect or the totality of him? Is he too needy? Too brusque? Too quiet? Too irascible?</p><p>Is it his looks? A little androgynous maybe, even though Shiro said he liked the long hair? Is it the purple eyes that are an unpleasant reminder that, at the end of it all, Keith is part Galra?</p><p>Is it because he is an alththalith in particular? Did the knowledge of Keith’s intersex anatomy kill any attraction Shiro might have held for him otherwise?</p><p>But hadn’t Shiro accepted all of that, in words and in deeds? More than just tolerating him, he encouraged Keith to be more than what he had been permitted so far. He saw something great in him. So Keith became great, became a paladin and a leader, became someone who could be on eye level with him.</p><p>All of that, and he still isn't enough. Shiro chose someone else. </p><p>Someone who hasn't saved his life time and time again. Someone who didn't get kicked out of the Garrison trying to defend him. Someone who didn't search the universe because he refused to believe he was dead.</p><p>And yet Keith chides himself for being so demanding. He should be glad that he gets to be Shiro’s friend, even if not his lover. After all, he didn’t save Shiro so they could be together - he saved Shiro so Shiro would get his chance to be happy. </p><p>Even if Shiro is happy with another man.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Keith attends the wedding. He has no excuse. Shiro sends Kolivan a special request to give Keith some time off on the date, and Kolivan grants it, oblivious to how that is the exact opposite of what Keith wants.</p><p>So Keith is there, for the entire weekend, bachelor party and all, stuffed into nice clothes he had to specifically buy for the occasion because he doesn’t own anything anymore that is not Blade of Marmora regulation. He’s put some effort in, trying to show that he cares, at least on the outside. His dress shirt is burgundy, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and his hair is up in a bun. Lance sees him and immediately jokes about whether he is looking to pick someone up at the mini bar.</p><p>Because Shiro had not wanted to make a big deal out of it, the party is essentially just the closest circle of his friends, hanging out in his hotel room and getting trashed.</p><p>So Lance and Hunk and Pidge are there, but Matt and Coran, too. The latter two happen to provide copious amounts of alcohol, with Pidge promptly declaring that she is going to drink Lance under the table.</p><p>They’ve put up a picture of Allura, just to keep her close, and Keith finds his gaze being drawn to it every now and then. She would have been happy for Shiro, he knows, would have rejoiced at the prospect of a wedding to truly chime in an era of peace, would probably even have offered to officiate the whole thing.</p><p>Allura would have been a good friend. Keith tries to be.</p><p>He is quiet for most of the evening, quieter than is usual for him, playing with his cuffs, sipping at his drink. The alcohol helps to replace the stone in his belly with a sort of fuzzy warmth, especially as he watches the others get more and more tipsy.</p><p>Lance tries to teach them some Spanish drinking song and then laughs his ass off at their pronunciation. Coran tries to teach them some Altean drinking song and is rather more offended at their pronunciation. Matt gets teary-eyed when he reveals that he has re-written his very emotional best man speech yet again.</p><p>“Wait a second,” Hunk says quietly and off to the side where Keith is sitting. No one else seems to hear because Lance is singing again. Keith doesn’t think he’s ever heard his singing before. He’s got a good soprano. “You’re not gonna be the best man?”</p><p>Keith blinks at him somewhat owlishly. He hadn’t been prepared for anyone asking any questions. Silently, he shakes his head.</p><p>“Aw, man,” Hunk says. He is probably the most sober out of all, both because of his size and because he doesn’t seem to have much of a taste for alcohol to begin with. “That’s just stupid.”</p><p>Keith manages to open his mouth.</p><p>“Shiro asked me,” he says because, even after all this, his instinct is still to protect Shiro. “I didn’t really have the time.”</p><p>Hunk still looks unconvinced, his mouth pulled into an unhappy line. Keith grips his drink a little harder and throws it back. </p><p>Shiro is sitting at the other end of the couch, in a similar manner to Keith: legs crossed, drinking quietly, smiling at their friends’ antics. He and Keith had exchanged greetings and a quick hug, but little more than that. Keith doesn’t know whether to be hurt or relieved. Part of him thought that he might just burst into tears as soon as he saw Shiro again.</p><p>At some point, Pidge asks everyone to talk about the first time they got really trashed. Coran’s story sounds fabulous and totally made up. Keith remembers sitting next to a bonfire in the desert and drinking himself into a stupor.</p><p>That’s what he does now, going unnoticed with how quiet of a drinker he is in comparison to the others. The fuzzy warmth in his belly has morphed into a steady kind of heat.</p><p>Eventually, Coran gets up and excuses himself for the night, announcing that he is no spring kneexle anymore and needs a full night of sleep if he wants to be in working order for the wedding tomorrow.</p><p>Hunk and Lance are next, after Lance has successfully been drunk under the table and cannot walk in a straight line anymore, much less find his way back to his hotel room on his own. After that, Matt and Pidge start bickering about something, apparently an old childhood quarrel, and then moments later they are tearfully apologizing and professing their love to each other.</p><p>Keith lets his eyes slide shut for just a moment. When he opens them again, Matt and Pidge are gone. The light in the room is muted, a golden glow, except for the blue shine coming off Shiro’s prosthetic. </p><p>“Awake again?” Shiro asks. His tone is amused, but in a lethargic way. He must be pretty drunk as well. </p><p>“Barely,” Keith mumbles. He pushes himself up a little, but it’s difficult. His bun has grown loose, slipping from the top of his head to somewhere at the nape of his neck. He reaches back, plucks the elastic free, plays with it for a moment before slipping it over his wrist. Tiredly, he cards his fingers through his hair, getting rid of the tangles.</p><p>“Your hair is really long now,” Shiro observes, with some sort of quiet surprise. And it’s stupid and callous because it’s like he doesn’t even remember their conversation from that night on the balcony. Keith has been growing out his hair for months now, for all the world to see. Shiro is the one who had to go and change something about his life without even bothering to tell Keith.</p><p>He doesn’t say that, though, just keeps his mouth shut. He has Pandora’s box sitting in his chest in the form of his heart, and he cannot risk opening it.</p><p>He knows that this is the time to leave. The party is over and there is no reason for him to stay. But he is too tired to move and everything is spinning. If he were to get up now, he wouldn’t even know which way to turn.</p><p>“Need help getting to your room?” Shiro asks. He is speaking like someone who is either not aware that he is slurring or trying very hard not to slur but failing miserably, but at least he manages to get to his feet somewhat steadily.</p><p>Keith mulishly shakes his head. He can get to his room. He doesn’t need help.</p><p>“C’mon,” Shiro says, moving to stand in front of Keith. His hands are grasping around Keith’s elbows, trying to pull him up, but Keith just lets himself flop to the side, like a ragdoll.</p><p>“Hey, now,” Shiro chuckles. “You wanna sleep on the couch?”</p><p>“No,” Keith says. He doesn’t want to sleep on the couch. He doesn’t want to be alone in this room with Shiro even a minute longer. But his bed is far away and the sofa is comfy and Keith turns his face into one of the cushions in some sort of defeat. “...maybe.”</p><p>“Okay,” Shiro says. His hands are on Keith’s feet, undoing the laces and slipping the shoes and then socks off him. Keith wriggles his toes a little, just because he can, and a moment later Shiro helps him hoist his legs up onto the sofa so he is at least laying flat.</p><p>“I’m gonna get you something to drink,” Shiro says and Keith moans miserably.</p><p>“Water,” Shiro clarifies and is back only a moment later, holding a glass in front of Keith’s face. “Can you drink this for me? You’ll feel better if you do.”</p><p>Keith doesn’t really believe that but he pushes himself up on his elbow anyway. Somehow, Shiro’s other hand is underneath his chin, tipping his head back a bit so Keith doesn’t spill too much. The water is cool and pleasant, and Keith finished the entire glass.</p><p>His eyes must have fallen shut without his permission because, when he opens them again, Shiro is still kneeling beside him and his face is too close. </p><p>“... what?” Keith asks. Shiro’s face is stupid and attractive and very dangerous. </p><p>“You’re cute when you are drunk,” Shiro says, amused. “I didn’t know that.”</p><p>“Not cute,” Keith objects automatically, because no one has ever called him cute, at least not that he remembers. Unbidden, his hazy gaze drops to Shiro’s lips. There is a tiny scar there, easy to miss when you get distracted by the bigger one across his nose. But Keith has always spent a lot of time just staring at this face. Shiro has always had such a pretty mouth, and Keith has wanted to kiss it for the longest time.</p><p>It’s Shiro who kisses him first. There is no warning to it, or at least none that Keith catches. He is too drunk to expect it and too drunk to feel any true elation. His mouth opens in an instinct that he mostly owes to the inebriation, and his right arm comes up to sling around the back of Shiro’s neck, holding on.</p><p>Even through the taste of alcohol, Keith can tell how nice Shiro smells, like expensive cologne and cheap shampoo and kind of a lot like he smelled back during their Garrison days.</p><p>Shiro pulls back, a brief moment of clarity in his eyes as he stares down at Keith.</p><p>“We’re drunk,” he says, and it’s not clear to Keith whether that’s a caution, an excuse, or just an observation.</p><p>“Uh-huh,” Keith agrees vaguely. Somehow, he manages to place one of his fingertips right against Shiro’s Cupid’s bow, like he has always wanted to. It has the side effect of shutting him up quite nicely and then, a moment later, Shiro lets his eyes slip shut and reverently kisses the pad of Keith’s finger.</p><p>Keith watches him through hooded eyes, watches as Shiro parts his lips and slides Keith’s finger into his mouth instead. His tongue curls around it, sucking lightly, and Keith moves it back and forth, transfixed.</p><p>His other hand is on Shiro’s shoulder, moves onto his chest. The upper buttons of his dress shirt are already undone and Keith just slips his hand inside, caressing his clavicles and the valley between his pectorals. His skin is very hot.</p><p>Shiro withdraws once more, but only to press a kiss into the hollow of Keith’s hand, like asking Keith to keep it safe. </p><p>“Keith,” he says, and Keith lives for the way his name sounds on Shiro’s lips.</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith replies to some unspoken question in the air between them. “Yeah, okay.” </p><p>Together, they manage to rid themselves of their clothes, more struggle than striptease. They don’t even try to get to the bed. Shiro just ends up braced above Keith on the couch, and they are kissing and kissing, until they are breathless and their skin has grown damp where they meet each other.</p><p>It is uncoordinated and unplanned. But Shiro’s hips are between his thighs and Keith spreads his legs to get a little more friction, both against his cock and against his pussy that is so wet he feels like he is dripping. </p><p>“Shiro,” he keens, his hands on Shiro’s shoulder blades, and he doesn’t know whether he means it as a warning or a plea.</p><p>Shiro just tightens his hold on him, gives a low groan, and then angles himself so that he only has to slide forward and inside.</p><p>It hurts, at first, but Keith is used to pain, so he doesn’t say anything, waits for the throbbing ache to subside and presses frenzied kisses against Shiro’s feverish temple.</p><p>Shiro’s thrusts are sloppy and inelegant, and he is panting into Keith’s ear in a manner that makes Keith think that this will not last long. But his weight and his scent are comforting, and Keith wants to soak all of it in, wants to memorize everything about this moment and keep it contained within him, like an oyster holding on to the speck of dirt and trying to turn it into a precious pearl.</p><p>So he tries to make the most of it, rolls his hips in a way that seems to come natural. Faintly, he remembers Regris’ words, about how pleasure comes easily to the alththalith, but Keith doesn’t feel a lot of that yet. He gets a hand between them, strokes himself, and that is slightly better, Shiro’s abs contracting against his knuckles, his own inside walls contracting around Shiro’s cock.</p><p>Shiro shudders and comes inside of him. </p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Keith wakes in the middle of the night, when it is still completely dark outside. His head is pounding and it takes him a long moment to orient himself. He finds that he is shivering, because he is naked and lying on the couch alone.</p><p>Everything comes back to him in a rush of shame and mortification. He wants to throw up, but maybe that is just the alcohol. Over on the bed, he can hear Shiro snoring, sleeping like the dead.</p><p>Keith got a lot of stealth training during his time with the Blade of Marmora. It’s an easy thing to slip into his clothes and sneak out of the room without even making a single noise. One the bed, Shiro does not stir. Keith pulls the door shut with a gentle click.</p><p>He makes his way down the hallway, trying to ignore the soreness between his legs and the pang in his chest. Luckily, his room is not far and his key card is still in the breast pocket of his shirt. He lets himself inside and then just breathes for a moment.</p><p>Focus, he tells himself. What can he do right now?</p><p>On autopilot, he makes it into the small en-suite bathroom, flicks on the light. His eyes sting, then adjust. His reflection tells him that his hair is messy and that he buttoned up his shirt wrong. He reeks, must have started to sweat out the alcohol, and there is the sour taste of bile at the back of his throat. </p><p>A shower. He can manage that.</p><p>He strips off his shirt, notes that there are no incriminating hickeys. Kicks off his shoes and socks, wriggles out of his pants and underwear. With an unsteady hand, he reaches between his legs to take stock of the damage. Fluids have dried on his pubic hair, making it stick together uncomfortably, and Keith’s fingers come away a little flakey.</p><p>There is no blood, but maybe that was to be expected. If Keith ever had the equivalent of a hymen, he must have torn it ages ago, during one fight or the other. Not like it matters. Not like Keith losing his virginity to the man he has loved since he was a boy holds any meaning.</p><p>He climbs into the shower and washes off the filth. The shame, however, lingers.</p><p> </p><p>↔ </p><p> </p><p>The wedding is held in the early afternoon. It’s a quaint little thing, a pavilion at a local park, only fifty chairs decked out in white, everything decorated with yellow roses and white baby’s breath.</p><p>Shiro himself looks radiant, whatever hangover he must have had probably cured by some sort of alien tonic, courtesy of Matt or Coran. He stands upon the steps of the pavilion, together with the officiant as well as Matt and Curtis’ sister Miranda.</p><p>Keith had contemplated not showing up after all. Had wanted to haul his ass off the planet and request a mission at the edge of the universe that would keep him occupied for at least a couple of weeks.</p><p>But that would only have made people ask questions, and Keith cannot handle questions right now. </p><p>A little earlier, when Shiro had welcomed the guests, he had looked at Keith and given no indication that he even remembers last night, and Keith hates the fact that he can no longer read him well enough to know whether that is true.</p><p>But, if he does remember, Keith resents him for it, less for his own sake even, but for Curtis’. Curtis seems like a nice fellow, from what little Keith knows of him. He does not deserve to get cheated on, especially not on his wedding day.</p><p>Now, Keith sits in the first row of chairs on Shiro’s side, alongside the rest of the former Team Voltron. The music starts playing and, when everyone turns to watch Curtis be led down the aisle by his step-father, he has to squint against the glare of the sun.</p><p>What did Curtis do to make Shiro marry him so easily? </p><p>Adam and Shiro had been together three years before they got engaged and they had still planned on waiting some more before actually getting married. Shiro had said that it was time for him to settle down, but he wasn’t even thirty yet. </p><p>What is it about peace that makes him think that he is running out of time? </p><p>What was it about war that made Keith think that he had plenty to spare?</p><p>The ceremony itself is short. Shiro is not religious, and Curtis is not religious enough to want to integrate much of it into his wedding. The officiant asks whether anyone has any objections to this union. Keith’s nails dig crescents into the palms of his hands. No one jumps up and objects; this is not a movie scene.</p><p>“I do,” Curtis says.</p><p>“I do,” Shiro says.</p><p>“Aw, man,” Hunk sniffs, wiping away a tear from his eye. “I always cry at weddings.”</p><p>It’s okay to cry, Keith remembers. He doesn’t, though. There’s no point.</p><p>He sticks around long enough for the cake cutting and then leaves the reception early. In the overall joy of the occasion, no one even seems to notice.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd say I'm sorry, but this is the moment we have been working toward since I first conceived of this fic. And speaking of conceiving... Well. We'll get to that soon.</p><p>Please yell at me and let me know whether this is what you were expecting to happen. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. viii.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter and the next were originally one, but I split them up because otherwise it felt like there was too much information and change happening in one go. Really curious to hear what you think. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Every single time Keith had lost Shiro in one way or another, he had forcefully tried to remember and hold on. Now, he is making himself forget and let go.</p><p>It is… not easy. His mission demands his entire attention, and he lets it consume him, but he still needs to sleep, and lying in bed late at night is when the memories follow him into his dream. </p><p>It’s no wonder then how exhausted he often finds himself. He welcomes it, works even harder instead of letting himself rest. What else is there to waste himself on but his work?</p><p>Here, people are grateful to see him. So far away from the epicenter of the war is he that no one recognizes him for a former Paladin of Voltron. No one asks for his autograph or stories of his heroics. He is just the commander of a small team that seeks to integrate half-forgotten planets into their intergalactic union. </p><p>Even though the mission itself had been relatively brief, the travel there had been long and the travel back is even longer because they get waylaid by space pirates and are forced to handle that matter as well. </p><p>By the time Keith makes it to the headquarters of the Blade of Marmora, almost half a year has passed since he last saw Kolivan and Krolia.</p><p>They welcome him warmly and Keith falls into his mother’s embrace like he thinks he would have done if she had been around when he was a child that scraped his knees and had nightmares after watching a monster movie.</p><p>The overall tiredness must show on his face because Krolia and Kolivan exchange one look and decide that he needs some rest and recreation before he is ready to be sent off on another mission. It is the opposite of what Keith wants, still feeling the urge to distract himself, </p><p>So he stays, not bothering to object to Kolivan’s gentle order. </p><p>“A phoeb at the most,” he tells them. He can’t be seen collecting rust. He has to remain on edge.</p><p>Being back at headquarters is good, he can admit that much. It is the closest thing to home he has had since they had to give up the Castle of Lions, and even that had only been a tentative tether towards the end of it.</p><p>He catches up with other members he hasn’t seen in a while, relieved that, so long after the war, familiar faces don’t simply disappear, never returning from their missions.</p><p>They sit in the canteen and chat, the previous rules of keeping fraternization to a minimum mostly obsolete. Quite often, Keith finds himself the center of attention, something that seems bizarre when he remembers the many lonely meals he had taken at schools and later at the Garrison.</p><p>“Someone’s popular,” his mother teases quietly when another Blade freely offers to share some food, and it takes Keith an embarrassingly long moment to understand what she means.</p><p>But the war is over and Keith is alththalith and a formidable fighter and some of his brethren are <em> interested </em>in him. It is a wild thought, almost inconceivable, and Keith doesn’t quite know how to react to it.</p><p>He accepts the food, though, because he seems to have developed a ravenous hunger, which doesn’t make much sense because it’s not like he is exerting much energy here. He trains almost every day, of course, does not find himself lacking for sparring partners.</p><p>His lingering exhausting, though, goes hand in hand with a dizziness that often occurs without a pattern or warning. </p><p>He is sparring with Kanda, a young Galra female who only recently joined the Blade, when another bout of dizziness hits him. He had pivoted to avoid her attack and then a tic later he is seeing dark spots dance across his vision. He tries to blink them away, fails, nearly stumbles when he tries to find sure footing.</p><p>He lifts a hand, signaling Kanda for a timeout.</p><p>“What is it?” she calls across the training mats. She is barely winded; they had just gotten started.</p><p>“Just dizzy,” Keith says and thinks he feels his knees buckling underneath him.</p><p>When he opens his eyes next, he is on his back on the mats, with his mother leaning over him. Kanda is nervously hovering off to the side.</p><p>“Keith,” Krolia says, gently slapping his cheek to rouse him. “You with me?”</p><p>Keith groans, twists his face into a grimace. He is still dizzy, which is bad enough, but apparently he must have fainted. He can’t recall that ever happening before, unless there was some serious blood loss, head trauma, or alien mojo involved.</p><p>“Can you get up?” Krolia asks and then slings an arm around him when he pushes himself off the floor. </p><p>“Did I do anything wrong?” Kanda asks. Her tail twitches anxiously. She is probably worried about word getting around that she had knocked out Commander Keith.</p><p>“You’re fine,” Keith waves her off. “Nothing to worry about. Dismissed.”</p><p>Krolia huffs. There is no doubt that <em> she </em> is worried.</p><p>“Come on,” she says, pulling him into her side because he has no trouble walking but she still must want to keep him close. “Let’s get you to med bay.” </p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>“Ah,” Maddur, the physician says after he has run a full-body scan on Keith, sounding almost pleased. “Just as I suspected.”</p><p>“What?” Keith asks because that is not exactly the reaction he has expected. He has known Maddur for a long time, got patched by him right after his trial, and Maddur has treated all kinds of his injuries, often chiding Keith for being needlessly careless.</p><p>“Well, you are alththalith, but you are also half-human, so I couldn’t be sure about the symptoms,” Maddur admits. “But the scan really leaves no room for doubt. You are gestating, four phoebs along, as it seems, though of course I cannot say for certain how that translates to your biology in particular.”</p><p>“Gestating,” Keith echoes, uncertain, because that cannot mean-</p><p>“Pregnant,” Maddur clarifies, nodding to himself and setting the scanner aside. “Congratulations.”</p><p>Keith opens his mouth, turns from Maddur to stare at his mother. Krolia, however, looks just as stunned.</p><p>“That’s- not possible,” Keith says. </p><p>He had grown up believing that, with his specific variation of intersexuality, he must be most likely sterile. Even if he had never confirmed this by getting the necessary physical checkups. But then, of course, he had learned that he was actually alththalith and that came with an entirely different set of rules.</p><p>“But,” Keith tries to argue because surely Maddur must be wrong. “I’ve never had a period.”</p><p>Now Maddur and Krolia are staring at him.</p><p>“Period?” Maddur asks, confused, and Keith feels himself fluster because this is embarrassing to explain.</p><p>“It’s after… ovulation. When the bleeding sets in to expel the unfertilized egg cell,” he manages, blushing up to his ears, which is stupid because he is not a teenager anymore and he is <em> not </em> pregnant.</p><p>“Oh,” Maddur says in understanding, but still sounding perturbed. “That must be… a human thing. The ovum is full of nutrients - it would be very wasteful to not simply absorb those again. Galra, at least, do not experience such bleeding.”</p><p>“Mom?” Keith asks and Krolia looks a little bit disturbed.</p><p>“Bleeding?” she asks him. “From your genitals? That sounds… so inconvenient. How have humans survived until now?”</p><p>Keith makes a frustrated sound. This is so pointless. Why can’t they see that there is no way he can be pregnant.</p><p>“I’m a hybrid,” he reminds them. “Aren’t hybrids sterile?”</p><p>“Ah,” Maddur nods, as though he were finally seeing Keith’s point. “The Galra’s exposure to quintessence has heightened our compatibility with other species. We are not limited to procreating amongst ourselves. It’s a kind of sped-up evolutionary process that has allowed for the Empire to spread so rapidly.”</p><p>“How did you think your father and I made you?” Krolia quips and then follows it up with a faint, “Quiznak, I’m going to be a grandmother.”</p><p>“Oh my God,” Keith says and suddenly the reality of it all collapses on him like a faulty ceiling. He is pregnant. He has had sex once in his life and he is pregnant. </p><p>Suddenly, he cannot see straight anymore and he thinks he might pass out again. Maddur’s and Krolia’s voices seem to be coming from far away.</p><p>“I think he is having a panic attack-” “Just a tic, I have something for that-” “Quick, he is hyperventilating-”</p><p>There is something being pressed over his mouth and he flinches in surprise, stills when he can suddenly breathe again. It’s an oxygen mask, he thinks, but his frantic eyes still seek out his mother for reassurance.</p><p>“Breathe, kit,” Krolia tells him, her larger hand on top of his head. “Just breathe.”</p><p>“I am going to give you some time to calm down,” Maddur says, respectfully stepping back. “Call me when you are ready to continue the examination.”</p><p>Keith closes his eyes, focuses on sucking air into his lungs, holding it there for a few seconds before exhaling again.</p><p>“There you go,” Krolia praises and it is rare that she is quite so gentle with him. “You’re doing fine. Just breathe and relax.”</p><p>It takes several minutes until Keith can breathe normally on his own again, several more until he is somewhat ready to talk. Krolia’s fingers are still in his hair, scritching at his scalp.</p><p>“Who’s the father?” she asks, because she is blunt, just like him, and in a way Keith appreciates it more than any beating around the bush.</p><p>But he just looks at her, unable to speak the words. His mother understands anyway.</p><p>“Oh, Keith,” she sighs, immediately pulling him in for a hug. “I don’t even know why I asked.”</p><p>And Keith leans his forehead against her shoulder but does not cry. He is beyond tears, beyond anger, beyond panic. </p><p>Shiro’s baby is growing inside of him. There’s no room for anything else.</p><p> </p><p>↔ </p><p> </p><p>All the anguish Keith had not allowed himself to feel in the aftermath of the bachelor party now comes rushing down on him like Niagara Falls. Where before he had not given himself time to think, now he can do nothing but think about it.</p><p>He will not deny that, on the morning after, he had held the faint hope that Shiro would call off the wedding. Confess to Curtis what had transpired. And, maybe, confess to Keith in an altogether different matter. </p><p>Yet none of that had happened. Shiro slipped a ring on Curtis’ finger with such utter conviction that Keith was almost sure that he truly didn’t remember their night together. The only proof that he does remember is the fact that, since then, he has not tried to contact Keith. He hasn’t called him, hasn’t texted, even though they used to talk a lot even after the engagement. And that, if nothing else, reads like an admission of guilt to Keith.</p><p>But of course Shiro does not want him. Of course Shiro would not want the child. So, of course, Keith is not going to tell him anything about it. He can just sit here and war with himself.</p><p>There is no mission to take his mind off the matter. Even training is out, because Maddur says extreme exertion might induce a miscarriage. Keith wonders whether that wouldn’t be for the best. Whether he should get the equivalent of a space abortion and pretend this never happend. </p><p>“I kept you, when I shouldn’t have,” his mother tells him. He’s curled up into her side, feeling small. He always feels small next to her.</p><p>“That was different,” he points out the flaw in her logic. “Dad loved you.”</p><p>“If he didn’t, that wouldn’t have mattered,” she says. “What mattered was that I loved you.”</p><p>They both fall into silence. Keith ponders the unspoken question: Can he love this child? Has he maybe already begun?</p><p>“I don’t know how to be a parent,” he says, but he means being a single parent in particular. His father had somehow managed but it’s not like Keith’s childhood had been exactly normal. Or like Keith had grown up very well adjusted to the rest of society.</p><p>“No one really does,” Krolia sighs, rubbing her cheek against the top of his head. “Maybe some go into it thinking they do, but those are usually in for a rude awakening. Parenthood is one surprise after the other. I certainly didn’t expect my little gremlin to become a Paladin of Voltron.”</p><p>“I’m not a gremlin,” Keith pouts. </p><p>“All children are gremlins,” his mother knows. “One moment they are cute and then they are throwing a tantrum so bad you wanna dropkick them into the wall.”</p><p>“... you wanted to dropkick me into a wall?”</p><p>“All the time,” she confirms. “Even at only a few weeks old, you were so headstrong that you drove both me and your father to tears. When you didn’t like something, you threw tantrums that put giant zeemakhans to shame. You screamed so loudly we thought people all the way back in town must have heard. And then moments later, you would be giggling and babbling and drooling all over me.”</p><p>“Why do you make it sound like baby me was deliberately trying to torture you?” Keith wants to know, slightly put-out.</p><p>“Because raising a child is psychological warfare. If you don’t take my word for it, ask literally anyone who’s done it before.”</p><p>“You’re not exactly selling the idea of having a baby, you know?” Keith tells her. “Why the hell would I wanna keep it?”</p><p>Above him, he feels his mother shift and then press a kiss into his hair. </p><p>“Because it’s gonna be worth it,” she says.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Keith never imagined himself as a parent, his imagined sterility being just one of the many reasons, and the whiplash of everything still makes it difficult to let the whole scope of the situation truly sink in. </p><p>Yet, while Keith has been abandoned many times in his life, he never quite learned how to do the same. He knows that he will not be able to give up this child, no matter what ill-fated stars it was conceived under. But he is also not delusional enough to believe that he can do it all by himself. Or maybe he simply lacks confidence. </p><p>Staying with the Blades would be the obvious solution. His mother is here to support him, and Kolivan would surely act as a surrogate uncle, even if he wouldn’t outright say so. But the agents are busy and their headquarters bleak. There is not much for a child here, certainly not for one that had so little Galra blood in it. And the truth is that Keith does not have many friends here. Admirers, yes, and compatriots. Axca, Ezor and Zethrid are around sometimes, but Keith cannot imagine them as babysitters. In fact, he cannot even imagine telling them at all.</p><p>He does tell Kolivan, but mostly out of necessity because he needs permission to be relieved from his position. Kolivan, of course, takes the news as he takes every sky-shattering revelation: with an unmoved mien and no indication on what he is truly thinking.</p><p>He does not ask questions about the child’s parentage. But, then again, he had been there when Keith had faced the hologram during the trial. Maybe he has some idea.</p><p>Which is also the reason why Keith begs him not to tell anyone of Keith’s reason for leaving. Especially not Keith’s friends. Perhaps it’s an overly cautious request; Kolivan is not known for making smalltalk and would also know better than to just blab out personal information. But Keith cannot risk someone inquiring about him and Kolivan not having a solid explanation for his continued absence.</p><p>“Where will you go?” Kolivan asks toward the end of their conversation that has been blissfully similar to all their conversations - brief, to the point, result-oriented.</p><p>Keith glances off to the side, because this is a question he has asked himself since the moment he realized that he was not going to terminate the pregnancy, despite Maddur’s cautious offer.</p><p>Olkarion would have been a safe haven. Keith had loved the expansive woodlands and clean air, the landscapes so similar to Earth, even if so different from the Arizonian desert Keith himself had grown up with. But that planet had been just one of the many victims that had accumulated around the end of the war. As far as Keith knew, the last surviving Olkari had still been scattered around the solar system, not having found a suitable new planet to settle down on yet.</p><p>Altea maybe, with its sprawling juniberry fields and vaporized rock showers, freshly inhabited by the survivors of Lotor’s colony. But Keith doesn’t know anyone there, feels no connection apart from memories of Coran and Allura lamenting the beauty of their planet.</p><p>Daibazaal, a part of Keith thinks, because there is some symbolism in that, the orphan lost among the stars, returning to the homestead of his ancestors to raise his own child. But there is on reason apart from that. While Daibazaal has been repopulated by the Galra, most other species have stayed away, too leery yet of their former enemies. Keith, with his pale skin and shorter statue, would never be able to blend in, and he suspects that it wouldn’t be easier for his mostly human child. He knows what being an outcast feels like, and he loathes the thought of doing the same to his kid.</p><p>But Keith is a simple creature, like a frog. And his amphibian brain tells him to return to where he was born.</p><p>“I think I have a place in mind,” he says and leaves it at that.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And we have reached the moment of truth. Hope you liked my explanations of alien biology - which is actually inspired by just animal biology. Because periods are dumb. If you, too, think that periods are dumb, leave a comment below.</p><p>Or if you just wanna scream about the BEBE. That works, too.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. ix.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you as always for the wonderful feedback. I am so glad to see that this story has been gaining traction. Originally, I thought I'd be lucky if I'd even get a 100 comments on it, so seeing that we are barely halfway through the story and already close to 200 is really uplifting. It's nice to know that people still love Sheith, no matter the circumstances. ♥</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So Earth it is, but not Arizona, not even the United States at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cannot go to Arizona. Arizona is where the Garrison is. And the Garrison is where Shiro is. And where Shiro is… Well. There rest the remains of Keith’s splintered heart.           </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead, five months to the day since he watched Shiro and Curtis kiss beneath a quaint little gazebo, Keith lands his shuttle on an astroport for civilian space travel and registers his arrival with the Cuban authorities.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Four hours later, he is strolling down the winding path up to a small farm in San Juan de Díos de Cárdenas, just a few miles from Varadero Beach. Kosmo is by his side, and then not, zapping this way and that way, sniffing one tree, pissing against another. As far as first impressions go, he definitely seems to like it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s early spring now but this is still the Caribbeans so the weather is still a warm surprise, especially after the long months spent in the vacuous climate of space stations and the carefully regulated temperature of shuttles and cruisers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith has to shield his eyes against the sun that sits low in the sky but hasn’t lost much of its heat, even so late in the afternoon. Since he arrived, he has been tempted to get rid of his coat - a Marmora standard issue cloak that serves well to hide his figure. Keith has begun to show and he hadn’t wanted anyone to recognize him as the Black Paladin and start asking questions about his appearance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he makes it to the farmhouse and onto the porch, he allows himself another moment to war with himself. Having come here might have been a really good choice. Or a terrible one. It’s hard to tell in advance; Lance has always been one for the extreme ends of any spectrum. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a digital interface at the door, a few years outdated, but with a display and a camera and everything. However, there is also a rather large brazen bell hanging from a hook right next to it. Keith considers it for a moment and then reaches out to ring it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sound is immediate and surprisingly loud. Loud enough that Keith makes himself flinch a little. It pierces right through the idyll of the little farm, and he half expects to hear some guard dog bark in response or even tearing around the corner of the house to ward them off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That doesn’t happen, though. Kosmo just makes a disgruntled noise at the noise and then sticks his head between Keith’s legs. It’s a deceptively relaxed pose; he is absolutely ready to teleport Keith out of there if something unpleasant were to happen now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s okay, bud,” Keith soothes him, absent-mindedly reaching down to scritch at the spot between Kosmos’s eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the end, the door to the house does not open. Instead, there’s a long lanky figure leaning over the fence on the left side of the porch, peering up Keith from underneath his straw hat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith?” Lance says, disbelieving. “Is that you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s wearing gardening gloves and overalls and that, combined with the hat, makes him look some weird mix between a hick and a suburban white lady that Keith cannot stop himself from cracking a grin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why, you know a lot of people walking around with space wolves?” he asks, because riling Lance up can admittedly be fun sometimes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance, to his credit, recovers quickly from his justified surprise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, the space wolf is one thing,” he admits with a low whistle that has Kosmo tilting his head in response. “But the lone wolf? That’s an altogether different matter.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s smile dims a little. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, about that, actually,” he says. “Do you have a minute to talk?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lance has a minute. Several minutes, even.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d been out planting some stuff, he explains as he leads Keith inside, slipping off his gloves. They have machines for the actual farm work, of course, but his family has always taken great pride in tending to their garden personally. And love and manual labor, according to his abuelita, is what makes flowers thrive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith looks around the hallway and then the living room a little curiously. The house is already a bit older, but obviously well loved. Along with the lands, it had been in the possession of the McClains for almost a century now, from what Keith remembers of Lance’s lengthy explanations about his family history. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are photographs of lots of family members, some of whom Keith recognizes. There’s a teenage Veronica with a preteen Lance and Rachel. An old woman with Lance’s pointy nose. A young man who looks a lot like Lance in old-fashioned clothes, so maybe an uncle or grandfather. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith feels a muted spark of envy in his chest. He’s lost his father’s house years ago now, but there had also never been many pictures growing up. His father had been a warm but largely solitary man. Keith never even knew anything about his paternal grandparents, whether they were dead or whether there had been some big fallout before. He knew his dad was from the South, but that was about it. As a child, it had never occured to Keith to ask for more, and then he never got the chance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Meeting his mother had filled some of the holes while creating new rifts. Her own parents had died when she was a teenager, killed for insubordination under the Galra empire. It’s what had made her join the Blade of Marmora in the first place. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith swallows the regret, gratefully accepts the glass of cool lemonade Lance places in front of him on the coffee table. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There you go, you big shaggy dog,” Lance says, putting a big bowl of water on the floor for Kosmo. Kosmo gives a low ruff as a thanks and then eagerly begins to lap at it, immediately making a mess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith takes a sip of his lemonade, much more carefully, and Lance sits down on the sofa across from him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” Lance says, smacking his hands onto his thighs. His arms are browner than ever, and the sleeves of his white t-shirt bulge around his biceps. Weirdly enough, he seems buffer that Keith remembers him every being during the war, when they had trained and fought on an almost daily basis. Maybe there really was something special about manual labor. “What brings everyone’s favorite little snowflake into my humble abode?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Snowflake?” Keith asks, a little skeptical. He has been called many things in his life, but snowflake had never been among that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, you know.” Lance casually waves a hand. “Pale, one of a kind, not often seen this close to the equator.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith snorts. He doesn’t bother pointing out that he hasn’t even been anywhere close to Earth in almost half a year.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve had some stuff come up,” he says evasively. “So I asked Kolivan to relieve me of my duties for the time being.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What, you taking a vacation from your Marmorite business?” Lance asks, raising his eyebrows. “Never thought I’d hear that from you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith pokes his tongue into the side of his cheek.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not a vacation,” he clarifies. “I won’t be returning to the Blade anytime soon. I would just be a liability.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Liability,” Lance echoes. “You? Last I heard, everyone from the Garrison to New Altea was salivating at the thought of getting their hands on you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith sighs. He had tried to prepare a speech in his head, similar to what he had told Kolivan. But Kolivan had known that Keith was able to conceive in the first place; Keith didn’t have to carefully lead him up to it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then again, this is Lance. A blunt hit over the head would do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Without beating around the bush any longer, Keith slips off his cloak, hoping the visuals will do the explaining. Because he is tall and his abdomen muscular but, by now, his belly has rounded in such a manner that it doesn’t look like the kind of weight gain that comes from eating too much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Woah.” Lance lets out an awkward laugh, obviously caught off guard. “I was wondering why you didn’t ditch the poncho when you came in. You look like someone got you up the duff. Should I break out the cigars? Because, I mean, you did come to the right place for that.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Keith doesn’t say anything to either refute that observation or join in on the joke, the laugh gets stuck in Lance’s throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What,” he says with a wide-eyed stare, and again, “What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith doesn’t break his silence, just swallows forcibly and lowers his head. Kosmo has sat up and places his big head on Keith’s knee, looking at him with doleful eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith can practically hear the gears in Lance’s head to find an explanation for this. Luckily, he is more quick-witted than some might give him credit for. He has met all kinds of alien species now, and he has met other alththalith among the Galra. He simply never suspected that this would apply to Keith as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re… pregnant,” Lance confirms, slowly, like acknowledging it out loud might somehow burst the bubble that is Keith’s belly. “You’re having a baby. There’s… an actual child inside of you right now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“... yeah,” Keith acknowledges, before going right back to biting his tongue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I- That is- unexpected,” Lance says, diplomatically choosing a word that is more neutral than ‘crazy’ or ‘freakish’. “Who’s- Who’s the father? The other father, I mean.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith shakes his head. He’s not ready to talk about that yet, if ever.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a long moment, Lance is quiet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith,” he says and there is an odd tilt to his voice. “Keith, were you- Did you not want it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh. Maybe Keith should have seen that one coming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not… It was just a mistake,” he corrects. His shoulders hurt from the tension in them. “Just- I read more into the situation than there was.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance relaxes again, breathes out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You really had me scared for a second there, buddy,” he says. “But then why… Don’t you really know the guy?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not important,” Keith brushes him off. “I just can’t stay with the Blade like this, so I needed a place where I can… clear my head. Figure out what comes next.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t dare ask for charity, but Lance understands anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith, man,” he says, reaching out to touch Keith’s knee. “You can stay here for as long as you need to. Whether that’s tomorrow or in ten years. I mean, hell, I have no idea what’s going on right now because this is not a situation I ever could have imagined possible, but I’m not just gonna send away a friend in need.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith allows himself a tentative smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Friend?” he asks. “What happened to Lance and Keith, neck and neck?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t test your luck,” Lance huffs before pushing himself up on his feet. “C’mon, let’s get you set up in Veronica’s old room. She used to come by more often, but with her new position at the Garrison it’s pretty much only the holidays anymore. And I’m sure she won’t mind sleeping on the sofa instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith jumps up as well, even as Kosmo protests against the sudden movement.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can pay you,” he hurries to say. He can’t, really, since the Blades are mostly a non-profit kind of deal. The Garrison gave each of the paladins a sort of pension, a reimbursement for their sacrifices, but Keith wonders how long it will possibly last once he has to feed and clothe the kid.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Non-sense,” Lance waves him off, making his way toward the staircase. “We don’t have much, I’ll admit, but one mouth more or less to feed makes little difference around here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is so nonchalant about that, about letting Keith stay, and Keith feels a knot come undone beneath his sternum. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know where he would have gone if Lance had rejected him. He would have found some place, eventually, but it’s relieving to know he won’t have to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mi casa es su casa?” Keith tries, only for Lance to throw an appalled look over his shoulder, one hand clutching the banister. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please don’t do that, your accent is atrocious, we’ll have to work on that,” he says with a shudder before facing forward again and taking the stairs two at a time. “Good thing you’ll be here for a while.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keith says, fingers gliding over the worn wood of the handrail, made smooth by time and generations of hands. “Guess I will be…”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rest of the McClain family easily accepts Keith as well. They know him from before, of course, but it’s still a pleasant surprise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Any friend of Lance is a friend of ours,” Señora McClain offers warmly, and none of them even seem overly perturbed that Keith is a half-Galra about to have a baby. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith is not used to this kind of life, a house full of people who are happy to have him around. He knows the loneliness of space, the detached military discipline of the Blade of Marmora, the wide planes of a red desert. Even the Castle of Lions had been too vast and empty to really feel quite welcoming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are a lot of things that Keith forces himself to unlearn, like living out of a bag or getting up at ass crack in the morning. He cannot spar anymore, both because of his growing belly and because Lance calls him insane for even asking for a friendly match, so Keith opts for lighter workouts instead, watches Tai Chi tutorials online to keep himself sharp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes long sprawling walks with Kosmo, enjoying the countryside and the rolling hills. He has always liked the outdoors, but there is a calming difference between the desert and a field covered in lush green grass. No wonder, really, that Lance had always been plagued by homesickness. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance himself if easy company, easier than Keith would have expected. He is busy a lot, because there is always something to be done on the farm, but here at home, surrounded by his family, he also seems much more at ease than he ever did out in space or, presumably, during his time at the Garrison.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He teaches Keith some easy Spanish though he maintains that Keith’s pronunciation is still abysmal. There is no malice in his voice whenever he says that, just some sort of understated joy, happy that he gets to explain things to Keith who used to be such a quick learner with everything else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a good teacher,” Keith tells him one day when Lance has just taught him the finer differences between </span>
  <em>
    <span>ser</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>estar,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Lance preens like a vain cat and lets himself fall back into the grass outside the house where they are sitting in the shade.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course I am,” Lance claims and there is that familiar cocksuredness, always slightly overblown as though to distract from his true insecurities. “If I hadn’t been accepted to the Garrison, I would have gone into education instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really?” Keith asks, trying to imagine that. Lance had always struck him more as the class clown than the teacher’s pet. Though, to be fair, a class clown turned teacher probably knows how to engage a class. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure, man.” Lance wriggles his eyebrows. “And I always figured, if I get through the Garrison, become a fighter class pilot, do my fair share of risky missions, I can still retire and train the new batches of cadets instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“... You wanted to be Iverson,” Keith realizes and Lance squawks in indignance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No!” he claims. “I wanted to be the cooler, more popular version of Iverson. You know, the kind girls swoon over. Though I guess there were some girls who did swoon over Iverson...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you still do class visits?” Keith asks. Lance had been good at that, he recalls; children first adored him for being a hero and then for being so goofy and entertaining. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eh, only every couple of months or so,” Lance admits. “It gets exhausting, you know, rehashing every detail of your past again and again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keith says. Absent-mindedly, his hand strays to his bulging belly. “I know…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance’s gaze follows the movement, squinting against the sunlight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” he says. “Are you looking forward to it? Being a parent?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I never thought I’d be a parent. I never planned this. I… don’t think I’ll be very good at it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the truth. Keith has had a lot of parental figures in his life, between all the foster homes and social workers and teachers, between Krolia and Kolivan. But none of them had done a consistently good job. None of them were what he would have needed as a child. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And even when Keith was a kid, he hadn’t been very good with other children. He didn’t play well. He didn’t care to feign interests in games and conversation. Mostly, he wanted to be left alone to read a book or maybe go for a walk. He’s probably going to be even worse as a parent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, good thing I am here then,” Lance declares grandly, rousing Keith from his maudlin thoughts. “I practically helped raise Nadia and Sylvio, not to mention a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. I am prime big brother slash babysitter material. I know all the best bedtime stories and am a master at hide and seek. I cut the crust off toast and the peel off apples. I am a god among mortals when it comes to children.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith snorts. “Humble as ever, I see.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean it! I know all about babies, man,” Lance brags, flapping his hand about. “But only human babies, really. Galra babies? No clue, apart from the faint suspicion that their teething phase is probably a lot more harrowing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Keith muses. His palm is rubbing at his belly again; it has become a bit of a habit. “The kid will only be a quarter Galra.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh?” Lance perks up, intrigued. “What’s the other half then? Balmera? Altean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Keith says and looks away, over at the butterflies and bumblebees converging at the lilac tree. “One quarter Galra, three-quarter human.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can practically hear Lance’s mouth fall open.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oooh,” Lance says after a long beat. “Okay. Hm. Hadn’t expected that. But that probably makes things a whole lot easier. Because! There is this whole other stuff to consider: the duration of the pregnancy, the size of the fetus, that kinda stuff.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keith agrees. “My mom told me some, but she wasn’t sure herself. When she was pregnant with me, she and my dad had no idea what to expect. Most obstetricians would have asked questions if a seven-foot tall purple alien walked into their practice to get an ultrasound.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Heh,” Lance says. “Imagine if you had turned out purple, too. That would have been interesting.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, my parents were apparently worried about that as well.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s good to joke about everything like that. To think about the hilarity of raising a one-quarter-alien baby on a planet that only truly found out about the existence of other intelligent life forms within the past few years. It distracts him from the more serious thoughts that tend to consume him when he is lying awake in Veronica’s room, Kosmo snoring away on the floor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Against his palm, he feels the barest flutter of movement.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔ </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lance wears grief like an old comfortable sweater. Like something he will never quite outgrow because it was always a few sizes too big for him. He puts it on every morning and often wears it to bed at night, and only rarely takes it off, when the sun is very bright so he can shrug it off for a few carefree moments. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the cold memory always returns, and so does the grief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something about it reminds Keith of his father. That strange nuance of almost-widowed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His father was almost widowed, because he and Krolia had never married, and because he was certain that she was still alive out there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Almost-widowed in Lance’s case meant that he never really got to be with Allura at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that’s precisely how he puts it when they are sitting out on the porch one summer evening, a beer propped up on his knee, and an iced tea on Keith’s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know what I hate the most?” Lance says, with equal parts spite and lamentation as he gazes out at the stars. “That we were simply an almost. We had this potential, we just weren’t there yet. That was taken from us. All of it… She would have done so many great things and I wanted to be there to see it, to cheer her on. Instead, I get a kiss and an empty what if.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah…” Keith says quietly because he knows what that feels like.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s just… so fucking unfair,” Lance continues. His hand has come up to rub at his forehead, but Keith suspects he is just hiding the tears. “That I get my family back and everyone is alive, but then I have to lose Allura instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keith repeats because that, too, is very familiar. His life has always been very give and take. He cannot remember a time that he truly got to have anything for good. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s never been good at comforting others, but he tries anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“At least she wanted you,” he offers, and the words may come across as callous, but he hopes Lance may find some solace in them anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gets up, walks to the door, opens the fly screen, just stands on the threshold for a moment, watching as Lance sullenly stares down onto the label on his beer bottle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The baby is Shiro’s,” he says and turns in for the night.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>:D I bet you weren't expecting this.</p>
<p>Maybe Keith going to Lance of all people doens't make much sense, but while Klancers have made me roll up my toetails at the mere mention of the pairing, I always would have loved to see a proper development of a friendship between those two. So that's what I am trying to do here. With actually made me split up the next chapter again, because Lance is so damn fun to write, really. </p>
<p>And yes, I have decided that Lance's family permanently lives in Cuba. That's another thing that never made much sense in the series. EVERYONE'S family was living close to the Garrison? The Holt makes sense, and fine, Keith's dad had to meet Krolia close to the Blue Lion etc. But Hunk's family is in the labor camps? Lance's whole family is just kind of there the whole time? I always imagined the Garrison to be something more of an international facility that was quite difficult to get into. So all the cadets (Lance included) would actually have gone through a tough selection process. Instead, it kinda seems like "Well, the Garrison was in my school districts and my big sister already went there, so it made sense." Like, what. Shoddy worldbuilding once more. You have all these galaxies and parallel universes, but Earth is just ONE STATE IN THE US. Sure.</p>
<p>Anyway. I am ranting again. I wanted this to happen in Cuba, so it's happening in Cuba. But we are slowly drawing to a close on the Keith POV, and then we will find out wtf has been going on with Shiro to turn him into such a booger, as you have all be wondering.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. x.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Happy to see that people are enjoying the Klance interactions because that is literally all this chapter is. :P</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the following days, Lance doesn’t comment on anything. Maybe he has suspected for a while. He can probably do the math on when it happened and under what circumstances. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mercifully, he does not pressure Keith with well-meant advice like </span>
  <em>
    <span>You ought to tell him</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>He deserves to know</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Is that because he wants to protect Keith? Or Shiro and Curtis?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So they act like nothing changes, apart from how Keith's belly is steadily growing. He feels the child move on a daily basis now, and somehow that is both unsettling and calming at the same time. When he goes to bed at night, the child often comes awake, and Keith thinks of the sun rising in different time zones and all kinds of distance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a doctor from Velz who has set up shop downtown, due to the growing influx of non-human residents on Earth. She is trustworthy and familiar with Galran physiology, so Keith goes to her for his regular checkups where she tells him what to eat and what developmental milestones they have reached.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gives him 3D holograms of each ultrasound that Keith will sometimes sit and stare at for hours, waiting for it to truly feel like reality. Part of him still expects to wake from a dream or - more likely, perhaps - some hallucination brought on by whatever trouble he has gotten himself into on his latest mission.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He knows he is supposed to bond with the baby, to think of names and start buying all the supplies that a tiny creature needs, but everytime he tries to do that, he draws up a blank. That fact scares him. Aren’t there instincts that are supposed to kick in at some point? Is he deficient in this way, too?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Half of the time, his belly feels like something foreign and unwelcome, and it is an unpleasant reminder of being a teenager and feeling like a stranger in his body. Alien, in every sense of the word.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In his weakest moments, Keith thinks about having the child and simply leaving it to be raised by the McClains, returning to the Blade, like his mother once had. Or maybe just disappearing from his old life all together. There are so many galaxies and he has barely seen a handful. It would be an easy thing to just lose himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet he stays. Obligations are something he knows how to deal with. His life has never gone the way he wanted it to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For months, he doesn’t touch any of the stuff in Veronica’s room, doesn’t move or rearrange anything. It’s not his place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t bring much with him when he first came here, just a few sets of clothes that no longer fit him. He mostly wears sweats now and oversized sweaters that have the benefit of being both comfortable and mostly hiding his growing belly. There isn’t much else he owns, his mother’s knife, random mementos from his travels picked up here and there, that he keeps on the bedside table.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once he nears the third trimester, however, he begins feeling antsy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The room doesn’t feel like him, barely even smells like him, and he doesn’t like the thought of that. Eventually, he asks Lance whether there are some boxes that he can store Veronica’s stuff in for the time being, and Lance helps him sort through everything that was important to his sister when she was still a teenager. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She owns a lot of books, non-fiction, most of which Keith has read through by now, and a lot of YA novels, too, which Keith wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. He’s had more than enough of teenagers going on life-changing adventures and getting themselves into stupid love triangles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Together, he and Lance wrap horse figurines and snowglobes into paper, stuff crop tops and stretched-out bras into a big trash bag, and carefully take down all the Polaroids of Veronica and her friends stuck to the wall above the desk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith keeps the fuzzy blue blanket, the glow-in-the-dark stars, and the fairy lights strung above the headboard of the bed. He moves the furniture around a little, or rather lets himself be pushed aside when Lance squawks and says he shouldn’t exert himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then, at the end of it all, Lance surprises him by climbing up onto the attic and coming back down with a simple old-fashioned cradle made out of dark walnut wood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My great-grandpa made this when my grandma was born,” he explains proudly, hands on his hips. “And since then, all McClain kids had it as their first bed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lance,” Keith croaks. Inexplicably his throat feels very tight. The cradle stands between them, a little worn but with love clearly edged into its very surface. “I can’t-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nuh-uh,” Lance says, lifting a hand. “Let me stop you right there. I know you think it’s not appropriate or whatever, but… just accept it, okay? If you’re gonna stick around, your kid is part of the family. And that means they will sleep in that bed. Which is honestly for the best because my mom has been hinting that she wants more grandchildren and currently </span>
  <em>
    <span>none</span>
  </em>
  <span> of us have any plans for that, so! You’d be doing me a favor, really.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith bits the inside of his cheek, his gaze resting on the cradle. It’s tiny. Or… it’s not really tiny, obviously sturdy and made to fit a child for at least the first couple of months. But the thought that Keith would bear a child which he could rock asleep in this cradle, family history and all… it makes him want to sink to his knees and bawl his eyes out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t, though.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thanks,” he says, aware of how rough his voice sounds, even after he has swallowed. “That… means a lot. Really.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance must understand because he doesn’t wave him off and say something casual like ‘No big deal’. They both know this is a big deal, so they don’t try to downplay it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s a mattress and bedding and everything, too. Last time we used it was for Nadia, obviously, but it should be good to go after a wash,” Lance explains and then he is a flurry of ideas again, the mood shifting. “We really should start stocking up on other stuff, too, man! There’s clothes and toys and all that jazz. You need to pick a stuffed animal! Stuffed animals are basically the first friends babies have in life!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith chuckles, shakes his head. “I guess.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance cocks an eyebrow, eyes him critically. “Did you have a stuffed toy as a kid? Or did you just cuddle that knife of yours?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t get to actually have the knife until I was emancipated at sixteen,” Keith corrects him. His legal documents, the deed for his father’s plot of land, the knife - all of that had been under state custody like him, until he joined the Garrison and was assigned a temporary guardian who kept everything safe for him until he was old enough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I had a… stuffed hippo, I think,” he recalls instead. His dad must have gotten it for him at some point, but Keith doesn’t remember when he lost it. Was it at one of the foster homes? Or before that, when a custodian helped him pack up some of the stuff in his old room? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A hippo, huh,” Lance muses, eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “I had a shark. His name was Huberto.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith frowns. “The shark that is still sitting on your bed?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh man, you noticed that? Okay, fine, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> a shark and his name</span>
  <em>
    <span> is</span>
  </em>
  <span> Huberto, present tense. Happy?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure,” Keith drawls and then sighs, his shoulders sinking with it. “Should I get a wet cloth to wipe off the dust?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Off Huberto?” Lance asks in confusion. “Oh, off the cradle. Gotcha. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. There’s some spider webs in there, too, I bet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Keith goes, gets a rag and a bucket with small water, and when he makes it back to his room, Lance has put up the cradle right next to the bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is that too close,” he asks, looking back at Keith over his shoulder. “Like, I don’t want you to stumble over it, but once the kid is there, it’s gonna be easier for you to just reach over instead of having to get up every single time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure,” Keith says. He’s going to have to feed this baby and hold it and shush it and change its diapers. He’s going to be a parent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sets down the bucket and then heavily sits down at the edge of the mattress, hands on his knees, blowing out a breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everything okay there, buddy?” Lance asks, squinting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just… thinking how much easier this would be if you were the father,” he says, some sort of half-strangled joke, and Lance does let out some high-pitched noise of shock.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me?” Lance says. “Your baby daddy? I don’t think so. My mom would have me castrated if I got someone pregnant out of wedlock and-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cuts off, both of them realizing at the same time how bad of a turn that conversation took. Because Keith got pregnant outside of wedlock. While Shiro was about to enter into wedlock. It’s a very unpleasant reminder altogether.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Lance says, awkwardly rubbing a palm over his short hair. “That came out wrong.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, it’s okay,” Keith says. His fingers clench around his knees. “I mean- it’s my own fault. I was drunk and I… probably shouldn’t even have attended the wedding in the first place.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey now,” Lance says, an unhappy twist to his mouth. “Last time I heard there were at least two people needed to make a baby. And okay, maybe you were drunk, whatever, but Shiro was the one getting married! He didn’t need to stick his dick in you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh my God,” Keith says, pushing a hand to his mouth. Something about the crudeness of Lance’s words makes the memory of that night seem even more absurd. He almost wants to laugh.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean it,” Lance insists. “Did you roofie him and ride him into the sunset? Did you go to the party with the nefarious plan to seduce him and steal him away from his fiancé? Did you poke a hole into the condom? Unless the answer to any of these is yes, Shiro definitely wins the Biggest Idiot Award here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s something recalcitrant in Keith’s rib cage that wants to object, wants to protect Shiro from these accusations after all that has happened. But he doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a long moment, the two of them are silent, contemplative. Lance pulls over the bucket, wrings out the rag and starts wiping down the surfaces of the cradle. His skin is almost as dark as the wood itself, rich like a handful of soil. Keith watches each strong stroke along the sides of the cradle, the movement almost meditative.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He closes his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔ </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Only a few days later, they are sitting down in the living room and drinking tea. Kosmo has his head resting on Keith’s belly, seeming to silently communicate with the child in the way Keith himself has not quite figured out yet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wanna go to the beach later, bud?” he asks, playfully tugging at Kosmo’s ear, and Kosmo whines in response. Sometimes Keith thinks the only one who truly understands him is his space wolf, and that is a bit of a sad sentiment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now that his pregnancy has become pretty much impossible to hide, Keith doesn’t like going out in the daylight anymore, doesn’t like people seeing him and thinking things. He cannot risk being recognized and somehow word getting back to the Garrison. Pidge probably has put alerts on their names to get informed about any news that might talk about them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So instead he takes walks late at night, with only Kosmo to keep him company, just staring out at the dark waters or the star-dappled sky, trying to ignore the pull in his chest that is telling him that this is not the place for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are we gonna do about next month,” Lance asks and Keith stares down into his cup.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The message from Hunk had come an hour ago. The second anniversary of the end of the war is coming up and, last year, they had all promised each other to meet up on Altea once more. But things have changed since then.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t go,” Keith tells him, because that much is obvious. The infamous morning sickness that he had evaded for most of the pregnancy so far has now belatedly hit him with a vengeance. Even the thought of entering a spaceship serves to turn his stomach. Not to mention all the other reasons why a reunion is the worst thing that could happen right now. “Kolivan knows to tell them I’m on an extended mission. That should be enough of an excuse.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The others will be upset,” Lance points out, and of course they’ll be. Keith, the verified loner, the first to break away from their group after only two years. Yes, they’d be upset, but they wouldn’t be surprised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you want me to,” Lance offers, “I can stay here with you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” Keith shakes his head. “That would only make them suspicious. What would your excuse even be? And anyway, I shouldn’t drag you down more than I already have. You should go and meet the others. Honor Allura’s memory.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He already feels bad that he is basically forcing Lance to lie to the rest of the team by not telling them that Keith is staying with him and why. Not telling Shiro is one thing; but Hunk and Pidge are as close as two peas in a pod, and Pidge is still working with the Garrison and in collaboration with Matt. If they had any idea of what was going on, Shiro would eventually find out for sure.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ugh, I’m not even sure if I can look Shiro in the eyes anymore,” Lance groans, throwing his arms over the backrest of the sofa. “What if he goes in for a hug and I just punch him in the face right then and there?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No offense, but he’d easily block you,” Keith tells him soberly. Lance may have improved as a fighter, but Shiro definitely beat him in close combat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, maybe, if you hadn’t always hogged him for yourself back at the Garrison, he would have sparred with me every now and then and I would be able to hold a candle to him,” Lance accuses, and something about that is nice, a little throwback to the early days when Lance was all up in arms about Shiro playing favorites. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Strange how, for Lance and Keith to become closer, Shiro and Keith first had to grow apart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t hogging him,” Keith snorts. “He was my official mentor.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t get one of those.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You</span>
  </em>
  <span> didn’t beat his records on the sims.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Wow,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Lance says. “Rub it in, why dontcha? Because that doesn’t hurt at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, imagine if our positions were switched,” Keith says, before pointing at his protruding midsection. “Then you might be lugging around some unauthorized cargo right now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance splutters, immediately chokes on his spit and coughs rather unattractively. Keith cracks a grin. For some reason, it’s slowly becoming easier to joke about the matter. He cannot wallow in self-pity forever. Gallows humor is definitely some sort of improvement.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dios mío!” Lance wheezes when he has finally recovered somewhat. “That’s a mental image I could have done without. And how would that even have worked. I’m not... you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wriggles his fingers in an obscure manner that is probably meant to refer to the state of Keith’s sexual organs which he still doesn’t know all that many details about, except for their baby-making qualities.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Keith tells him. “After all, I had no idea it was possible either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he had known, he wonders, is that something he would have fantasized about? Would day dreams of kissing Shiro and being held by him have turned into imagining having his children? As a gay man, was that something Shiro would have imagined? Would he and Curtis end up adopting one of the many war orphans or even get a surrogate mother or something like that? Would Shiro one day hold a child in his arms, not knowing that there was already another one?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s mood has sunked to Marianas Trench levels again. These days it happens like a switch being flipped. The hormones, his doctor has told him. Keith, who had taught himself early on to keep a pretty tight lid on his feelings, doesn’t like it one bit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance, to his credit, has gotten pretty good at reading Keith in these moments. Maybe because he has seen his sister-in-law experience two pregnancies before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve loved him for a long time, huh?” Lance asks gently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Half my life, Keith thinks but only manages a tiny nod in response. It’s the first acknowledgement that it was more than just an ill-advised drunken hook-up for him. If it had been only that, the decisions would have been easier. Perhaps he would have gotten an abortion without a second thought. Perhaps he wouldn’t feel the need to keep everything a secret.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The truth is, he has loved Shiro in gradients. He used to think that his love would reach its peak or at least some sort of plateau so that he may get used to this state of being. Instead it seemed that, with every passing day, he loved him not just a little more but a little differently. Even after how long they had known each other, there was always something new to discover about Shiro. And Keith, madly, naively, loved every little thing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance wipes a palm over his face, lets his expression reemerge with a grimace. He stares down at his knees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, Keith,” he says. “This is long overdue but. I wanted to tell you that I am sorry for how I treated you back when Shiro- You know. The whole astral plane thing. Because I implied that you were trying to gain anything from the situation and that was… unbelievably callous of me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s mouth falls open, momentarily so caught off guard by that unexpected turn that he doesn’t quite know how to respond.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lance,” he says finally. “That was- years ago. You don’t have to apolo-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Lance shakes his head, lips pursing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, I do actually,” he insists. “Because now… I understand how you felt. And if there was any chance at all for Allura to be out there somewhere… I’d never stop looking.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s breath catches in his throat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A fractured part of him wonders whether the two of them should envy each other. Which way of losing love hurts less? But, in the end, there is not much of a difference. Lance has Altean face markings that Allura gave him. Keith has a burn wound. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With some effort, Keith swallows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thanks,” he tells Lance, genuinely. “I appreciate it.” Then, “Did you ever suspect…?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What,” Lance asks. “You and Shiro?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Since the very first moment he realized as a teenager that he was not simply superficially attracted to Shiro, but that he was also falling for him, slowly but surely, he had felt the need to hide it. First because of Adam, then because of the war and Shiro’s trauma and too many other reasons to count. And still he had always been convinced that it must have been obvious. That, if only someone took a second to look, to think, they would know without a doubt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe they never looked. Maybe no one thought he stood a chance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I guess in retrospect I should have caught on,” Lance muses. “But honestly, I just remember being jealous of how close you were. In the beginning, Shiro was always yapping on about teamwork day in and day out, but let's be real team was you guys. I guess I kinda felt left out. Hunk and Pidge were literally finishing each other’s sentences, and Coran practically raised Allura. A lot of times, I was just the seventh wheel.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He groans, bangs his head against the backrest. “Okay, sorry, I am making this about myself again. Fact is, the thought wasn’t even on my radar. Like, I was genuinely worried that you and Allura were gonna be a thing-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will never understand why you thought that was even on the table.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because you always seemed to get everything I wanted,” Lance exclaims. “The piloting skills. The cool mentor. The flashiest lion. You were like an action hero.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Funny,” Keith says, with little mirth. “You always had things I wanted.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like what?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A large loving family?” Keith offers. “A home to return to? People who wanted to eat lunch with you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance blows out a breath, like steam from a kettle. “Guess we had to find out the hard way that being a hero is not all that it’s cracked up to be, huh?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Few things ever are,” Keith says, thinking of Shiro’s lips on his, and downs the last of his tea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When Lance returns from Altea, he seems uncertain on whether talking about it would be unfair to Keith, like dangling the fruit before Tantalus. But just because Keith has reasons for not wanting to see his friends right now, does not mean that he doesn’t miss them. He wants to hear about the antics they have gotten up to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s okay,” Keith says when Lance just just once more cut himself short from diving into an anecdote. “I want to hear.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Lance tells him. About how one of Hunk’s restaurants nearly burned out a few weeks ago, about Coran’s efforts of creating an intergalactic library on Altea, about how Romelle and Tavo have started going steady.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pidge has grown like two inches,” Lance explains, trying to indicate Pidge’s alleged old height - somewhere around his hip - to her new one - right beneath his nose. “It’s crazy. Can you imagine how unstoppable she will be if she ever manages to reach the top shelf at the supermarket? No being should hold that much combined power.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I dunno,” Keith drawls. “The scary thing about Pidge is that she always seems ready to bite your ankles, like some rabid terrier. Maybe a growth spurt will mellow her out. The manic energy can spread a little.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fat chance,” Lance snorts. “She’ll start biting people’s noses instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t aggravate her then. Your looks would not be improved by a rhinectomy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance cups a hand over his face, as though that alone were enough to keep his nose safe from Katie Holt’s fury. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not my beautiful nose,” he whines, the sound muffled, and Keith shakes his head in amusement before beginning to fiddle with his ponytail, absent-mindedly tugging at the long strands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And Shiro?” he asks, because he apparently likes to torture himself, and Lance drops his hand again. They both knew they’d reach this part of the conversation eventually.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s doing good, I think,” Lance says. “Looking good, too. He dyed his hair.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He- what?” Keith says because that is possibly the last thing he had expected to hear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, he dyed his hair black again. Makes him look younger. Kinda like before the Kerberos Mission, I guess. Pidge teased him at first but then she said she’s gonna dye her hair green now and that we should expect pictures.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I. Okay.” Keith pulls a face. “Um. Anything else?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lance shrugs, looks uncomfortable. “He said he’s taking a cooking class and stuff like that and of course that got Hunk excited and… I’m sorry, Keith, I don’t know what to tell you here. He was… just Shiro.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keith bites his lower lip. “He didn’t ask about me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hunk asked whether you really weren’t gonna turn up, Coran said you were on a time-sensitive mission, I kept my trap shut, and Shiro kinda… just said that you probably had a good reason not to be there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Huh,” Keith huffs. He pokes a finger against his belly. From the inside, the baby pushes back. “I guess you could say that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For what it’s worth, I did not give away a single thing about you being here and incubating Black Paladin jr.” Lance plows on. “Then again, I don’t really think they would have believed it either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me willingly spending time with you?” Keith teases. “Yeah, that definitely sounds outrageous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are on thin ice, Mister, biting the hand that houses you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Technically, your parents are housing me and, by this point, I doubt they would kick me out.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, haha, very funny.” Lance kicks his feet up on the coffee table. “Anyway. You know this is not how this can continue, right? The others will wanna know where you have disappeared to and, no, you cannot fake your death, that would be a horrible thing to do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t thinking about that!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure you weren’t,” Lance counters sarcastically. “Seriously, though. What are you gonna do? Hide your kid forever? Lead a double life? That’s gonna blow up in your face for sure.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” Keith admits reluctantly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Originally, before he had changed his mind about telling Lance, he had tried to come up with a convenient lie. He could have said that he had hooked up with one of the caterers at the wedding. That would have explained the timing and why no one saw him at the afterparty. It would also account for the child’s mostly human parentage and Keith’s disinterest in involving the other father.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But, if Shiro were to find out about the child and then hear the accompanying lie, he would immediately call his bluff. Almost eight months have passed since the wedding now and, while Keith has made no effort to reach out, Shiro hasn’t either. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is beyond the awkwardness after a drunken mistake. This is Shiro making it very clear that he holds no interest in salvaging whatever is left of the bond between them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll tell them, eventually,” Keith knows. He may have lost Shiro’s friendship, but he cannot risk shutting out the others because of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How about this,” Lance says. “By this time next year, you’ll have to make up your mind about what story you wanna go with. And your little one is gonna come with us to Altea.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The little one, as though having heard the invitation, gives a definite kick against Keith’s stomach, making him wince.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Deal,” he says and means it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>↔ </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Another chapter I ended splitting up. But the next one really will be the last from Keith's POV. Originally, I meant to just kind of breeze over the pregnancy, but then that didn't feel right, so I hope you like getting a more detailed insight on everything. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. xi.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Our last chapter from Keith's POV and probably the moment you have all been waiting for!</p><p>Chapter warnings for graphic depictions of childbirth and breastfeeding.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Krolia appears like every time she and Keith meet again - with little fanfare, a wild story or two, and now easily getting everyone in the McClain household to warm up to her.</p><p>Keith has been staying in touch with her, of course, but neither of them are big conversationalists, so their messages had always been rather curt and to the point. Now, it is somewhat bizarre to see her interact with Lance’s parents. They had met before, while the paladins were recovering from their fall to Earth, but the dynamics are different, now that they no longer have sons at the frontlines.</p><p>Lance’s mother Fernanda is warm and open without any guile. Krolia obviously appreciates the easy welcome, but there is still too much of a stray cat about her, slinking through the rooms of the house, always keeping an eye on the exits, always maintaining that last bit of wariness that Keith still hasn’t shaken off, even after months of living here. </p><p>Is that nature or nurture that has shaped them so? The war? The training with the Blade? The bone-deep knowledge that most people will eventually try to hurt you?</p><p>In any case, Krolia is here, in the Carribean, marveling at how it seems like a completely different world when compared to Arizona, which is all she had ever seen of Earth before. Only very few planets tended to have such diverse climates to allow for a large spectrum of biospheres, and humans seem to be among the very few species who have adapted to all of them. </p><p>Krolia sets up camp on one of the couches in the living-room, always up before anyone else, which is saying something for a household that is largely concerned with running a farm. Keith, in comparison, sleeps irregularly, sometimes awake with the sun because his bladder is urging him out of bed, sometimes dead tired after a night unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in.</p><p>Krolia coos at him and massages him and makes some foul-smelling Galra brew that actually helps against his nausea and heartburn.</p><p>“I would have killed for this stuff when I was pregnant with you,” she tells him because she obviously didn’t have any of the ingredients with her when she crash-landed in the desert. “All the stuff your father made for me didn’t do quiznak, and we had to be careful with actual medicine because we didn’t know how my body would react to it. You were a bit of a science experiment.”</p><p>“Great,” Keith moans. He’s been feeling awful all morning and the abysmal brew is all that seems to make him feel a little bit better. “Can’t imagine a better compliment.”</p><p>Krolia chuckles. “One day, your father introduced me to blueberries and I ended up eating so many of them for the rest of the pregnancy that he started to joke you would definitely turn purple.”</p><p>Keith stills. “I’ve been eating a lot of blueberries.”</p><p>“See,” she says, rubbing his shoulder. “Did you get the flatulence, too, because your dad was ready to move into the garage.”</p><p>“... Kosmo got up the other night and went to sleep downstairs.”</p><p>“I always knew you’d take after me,” she grins and ruffles his hair.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Keith knows pain. Over the course of the war, he has been choked and electrocuted, has broken bones and burned skin. The familiar does not scare him.</p><p>“I had a home birth,” Krolia muses, when they are discussing the options for delivery with Keith’s doctor, and Keith sends his mother an exasperated look.</p><p>“Because you couldn’t just march into a hospital.”</p><p>“True,” she sighs. “Still surprised your father didn’t faint from the pressure of delivering you.”</p><p>“Because he was worried that something might go wrong?”</p><p>“No, because I was threatening him with bodily harm throughout it all,” she returns and flashes him a sharp grin. </p><p>“In the end, you should go with whatever you feel comfortable with,” Doctor Oobloo tells Keith diplomatically. “You can have a homebirth with just a midwife present - if she notices that things are going wrong, you can still be taken to the hospital. You can schedule a c-section or have an epidural. Unless there are serious medical reasons to avoid something, the birth parent should get to make the call. I will give you a pamphlet with some of the potential dangers, but you are not in any of the at-risk groups. Though of course unexpected complications can always come up.”</p><p>Keith is half-tempted to ask whether they can find a way for Kosmo to just teleport the baby out of him. Mostly he doesn’t do it because, while Doctor Oobloo is a wonderful doctor, the people of Velz are ill-equipped to understand humor. During one of their first examinations, Keith had quipped whether it would still be possible to return the baby to the manufacturer because he had kept the receipt, and Doctor Oobloo had kindly pointed out to him that he had created the baby through sexual intercourse and that, even if he had been paying for the transaction, there was no way to return the sperm at this point.</p><p>Keith hadn’t tried joking anymore after that.</p><p>Something about a c-section is tempting. Anaesthesia, a few incisions, a few stitches, a few more days of recovery. It seems straight forward, predictable. Keith doesn’t know whether he can handle any more surprises.</p><p>He allows himself to think about it a few more days. The conception of the child wasn’t planned, but the delivery can be, to an extent. Keith doesn’t want to rush it. The choice makes him feel a little more in control.</p><p>“I thought everyone wants a natural birth,” Lance says in surprise, when the topic comes up. “Lisa had natural births for Nadia and Silvio. I think I would want a natural birth.”</p><p>Keith sends him a sideways look. “You due anytime soon?”</p><p>“Well, not that it would be any of your beeswax,” Lance tells him and then pointedly stuffs one of the decorative sofa cushions under his shirt, making him look how Keith had when he first arrived in Cuba. “But my little princess is gonna be a Libra and I will have a water birth.”</p><p>“You know most women poop themselves during birth, right?” Fernanda says, sticking her head out of the kitchen, because she has apparently overheard. “You’ll have some nice turds swimming through that water with you.”</p><p>“MOM!” Lance yells, immediately ripping the pillow from under his shirt and throwing it at her. “That’s disgusting!”</p><p>Fernanda punches the pillow out of the air without even batting an eyelash.</p><p>“It’s the truth,” she tells him. “And you are gonna pick that up.”</p><p>And then she ducks back into the kitchen.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>The contractions hit early in the morning, before the sun has even risen.</p><p>Keith ignores it at first because it’s not the first time he’s had Braxton-Hicks and he doesn’t want to unnecessarily wake anyone. So he tosses and turns in his bed at first, finally gets up to wander up and down through the room.</p><p>Kosmo is restless, too, moving from one spot to the next, lying down, whining, tail nervously thumping against the floor. </p><p>“I’m okay, buddy,” Keith assures him. “Just walking it off.”</p><p>He had already felt some twinges the day before, easily ignored for the most part. It had been uncomfortable, yes, but he was mostly uncomfortable in his body now. </p><p>This, however, feels different. More urgent. Significant.</p><p>He goes to the bathroom, uses the toilet, brushes his teeth, showers. His hair has gotten so long now that it’s more of a challenge to tame, so he wrings in out and puts it in a bun, letting it air-dry like always. </p><p>He eyes his toothbrush for a bit, then grabs it and returns to his room. His overnight bag is sitting at the foot of his bed. Fernanda had advised him to pack it a few weeks ago already. There’s nothing much in it, some comfortable clothes, a book, a neck pillow, Keith’s documents, and now his tooth brush. </p><p>Finally, he makes his way downstairs, Kosmo at his heel.</p><p>Fernanda and Krolia are in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. Krolio had apparently never taken to the brutally black coffee Keith’s father used to drink, but Fernanda’s espresso had quickly won her over. When Keith enters, the two women look up, glancing from him to how agitated Kosmo obviously is.</p><p>“Oh,” Fernanda says. “It is time?”</p><p>Having born five children - or rather six, since one had been a stillborn boy, as Lance had quietly confided in Keith a few weeks ago - Fernanda is a trooper and must recognize the signs.</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith says, hand nervously hovering on his belly. “I think so.”</p><p>Fernanda hums. “You’ll probably need to wait some more. If you go now, they are only going to send you back home. Do you want to eat a light breakfast?”</p><p>“I… yes. Thank you,” Keith says, sitting down next to his mother and Fernanda gets up to whip up a little something for him. He’s not really supposed to eat, in case he does need a c-section, but he is feeling queasy and light-headed already and he’ll probably have digested most of the food anyway but the time he heads to the hospital.</p><p>Krolia places a hand on his cheek, the unmarred one, her thumb gently caressing.</p><p>“Nervous?” she asks quietly and Keith bites his lip.</p><p>“Yeah,” he admits. </p><p>Pregnancy had been long and overwhelming and really fucking bizarre. But it was a sort of passive change. Something that happened <em> to </em> him. But once the baby is born, his life would truly transform for good. He’d be a parent. Which includes actual parenting. And he has tried to read books and articles and watch documentaries and observe how the adults are handling Nadia and Silvio, but all of that still feels so abstract.</p><p>In a few hours from now, Keith will be holding a child in his arms. A child that will be his. The first thing for himself. Something he was gifted and would get to keep for good.</p><p>He rests his forehead on his folded arms and closes his eyes as Krolia comfortingly rubs his back and Fernanda’s knife moves against the chopping board.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>“What do you mean, he is in labor?!” Lance’s voice bursts through the patio door, immediately followed by Lance himself.</p><p>“Relax, mijo,” his father Augusto drawls, following at a much more sedate pace. “These things take their time.”</p><p>Lance makes a disbelieving noise and then turns to stare at Keith who has been trying to relax on the couch. Keith stares back.</p><p>“For real?” Lance asks and Keith shrugs.</p><p>The contractions have been coming more frequently now, but they are still not enough to warrant heading to the hospital. Keith has never been big on doctors anyway; he would prefer waiting it out for as long as possible. </p><p>Another twinge races through him, making him wince and lock up his limbs. When it’s over, he rolls himself off the sofa and makes for the door.</p><p>“Wait, where are you going?” Lance wants to know, staring at him with his mouth open like he has done so often when Keith pulled some sort of outrageously daring stunt on a mission.</p><p>“Outside,” Keith responds. The house suddenly feels stifling, too many people watching over him, their own nervous energy only exacerbating his. He needs fresh air and the blue sky above him.</p><p>“Can he do that?” Lance asks over his shoulder, glancing at his mother.</p><p>Fernanda shrugs. “If he wants to move, let him move. There is nothing much to do at this point but wait until the contractions become more regular.”</p><p>Keith pushes out the backdoor, making his way into the garden. It’s beautiful here, lush and green and alive. Immediately, he can breathe more easily, sucking in a deep breath and then slowly blowing it out again. Kosmo follows him closely, shuffling around him in circles like a sheep dog trying to keep his herd in one place, never taking his eyes off Keith.</p><p>Keith wonders whether there is something fitting about that. He’s seen in nature documentaries how mares and ewes will separate themselves from the herd to give birth, not just because they want their quiet but because they know they are a liability. After all, the smell of blood is bound to draw in predators. </p><p>There are no predators here, apart from Kosmo and then Lance who comes bounding down the stairs after him.</p><p>“You need someone to watch you,” Lance explains and then, when Kosmo snorts in offense, adds, “Someone with fingers who can use a phone, if need be.”</p><p>“He can just teleport me back inside,” Keith reminds him.</p><p>Lance rolls his eyes heavenward, as though asking God for patience. </p><p>“Just. Accept that I want to be here for you. Okay?” he asks, and Keith purses his lips.</p><p>“Yeah, okay. But… don’t hover. It’s making me antsy.”</p><p>“Do you mind if I talk?” Lance asks, and usually the answer to that would be yes, but some mindless chatter will keep Keith’s mind off the fact that the uterus he never needed or asked for is currently trying to expel a living being. </p><p>“Whatever,” he says and then groans, massaging his knuckles against his lower back as another contraction hits.</p><p>“Good, because this is the most nerve-wrecking thing I have ever done, and I have literally lived through an intergalactic war,” Lance says, anxiously watching Keith from the side, obviously unsure whether he should offer any help because he knows there isn’t much he can do in the first place.</p><p>“I told you, you can go,” Keith points out, once the pain has ebbed away. “There’s really no need for you to sit through this, if it stresses you out.”</p><p>“Are you kidding me?” Lance says, with an appalled expression. “I am definitely not leaving your side. Uncle Lance all the way.”</p><p>“Uncle?” Keith huffs. “You decided that all by yourself?”</p><p>“What, you got any objections?” Lance challenges, though he does look a little uncertain now.</p><p>“Well, I was gonna ask you to be godfather,” Keith says and Lance’s mouth drops open.</p><p>“You were? Wait, are you even religious?”</p><p>“No,” Keith admits. “It’s more of a symbolic gesture.”</p><p>Lance, predictably, preens.</p><p>“Hell yeah I’ll be your baby’s godfather,” he says and then stills. “Hey, you know what just occurred to me?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Children born here automatically gain citizenship,” Lance says. “Your kid will quite possibly be the very first Galra-Cuban baby! Isn’t that awesome?”</p><p>“I can barely contain my excitement,” Keith returns flatly.</p><p>“Have you considered names yet? You should pick something Cuban. How about Huberto for a boy-”</p><p>“I am not naming my child after your shark.”</p><p>“Or Belita for a girl. Something more symbolic maybe? I think Conceptión has a nice ring to it.”</p><p>“Harhar,” Keith says sarcastically. “Keep this up and the first words I teach this child will be ‘Lance is dumb’.”</p><p>“Aww, I feel special,” Lance coos and touches a hand to his heart. “Whatever happened to making my godfather, though?”</p><p>“Offer recanted.”</p><p>“Hey, no fair!” Lance complains and they keep bickering like this, a welcome distraction for Keith who would otherwise only have his own tumultuous thoughts to occupy him. He isn’t sure how long they must be wandering up and down the garden path, past sunflowers and rose bushes, but he thinks it must be close to an hour. Or maybe not. The pain is screwing with his perception of time. </p><p>For the third time, he has to stop by a tree and push his palms against it to breathe through the pressure in his pelvis, abdomen, lower back. He tries to ride out the pain, but all of his body is focused on the sensation, like the gravitational pull of a black hole.</p><p>“This sucks,” he says in a small voice, hunching up his shoulders and letting his forehead fall against the rough bark once he can breathe freely again.</p><p>“I think this is the first time I have ever heard you admit to being in pain,” Lance points out, but he sounds exhausted as well, as though he were so sympathetic to Keith’s ordeal that he cannot help but literally feel with him. “What is that now, every five minutes? You think we should head out?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith admits. “I guess.”</p><p>“No need to sound so enthusiastic,” Lance huffs. “C’mon, I’ll get your bag and your mom and then we’re off. You think you can make it to the car?”</p><p>“As long as I don’t have to drive, sure.”</p><p>“Glad to see even labor pains are not diminishing your stellar sense of humor,” Lance sighs. “Okay, let’s go. And tell Kosmo that he cannot come to the hospital!”</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>No matter how much Keith appreciates Lance’s continued friendship and support, he draws the line at Lance actually joining him in the delivery room. </p><p>Krolia is there with him instead, muttering quiet reassurances, even as she sceptically observes the medical staff and their - in her eyes - outdated equipment.</p><p>“You’ll be fine,” she tells Keith because she must know how nervous he is, now that his water has broken. “Galra are a hardy folk. There are rarely complications during birth, and the doctor will know what to do when there are.”</p><p>She had braided his hair when they first got in, making sure it wouldn’t tangle and get in the way. He’s been growing it out for over a year now and the braid rests on his shoulder like a memento, a trophy of all the tribulations he has been put through.</p><p>The other thing that has been growing is doing his damndest to split him apart from the inside out and Keith has to grit his teeth against each contraction to stop himself from crying out.</p><p>Labor pains are frankly the worst and weirdest sensation his body has ever been through. How is it that he has been to space and been hurt by actual alien weapons but the most alien kind of pain is also the most natural one? </p><p>It’s like every fibre of his being is focused on getting the child out of him, locking up like a vice and only easing up a little after what feels like an eternity. Each contraction is worse than the last one and he hates it, he hates it, he hates the feeling of having no control, like he has been hijacked by some strange entity that controls his movements and most of his mind as well. </p><p>The truth is, he is scared. Scared that something might go wrong, that he might <em> do </em> something wrong. He doesn’t think he could live with himself if something happened to the baby. He <em> needs </em>it to be okay. Just one thing in his life has to work out, one reward to balance out all the failures.  </p><p>Before long, holding back the cries becomes an impossibility. He is not full-on screaming, but the pushing and grunting gives him the mimikry of being an active participant in this whole scene. </p><p>In a way, it is like a high-stakes fight. The adrenaline makes his blood boil and his focus narrows down on what is right in front of him. He is aware of the nurses and his mother at his periphery, of the calming music playing in the background, but all he truly hears is the words of the midwife promising that he is almost there, that she can see the head crowning, that it will be over soon. </p><p>Keith is made of spit and grit and motor oil. He’s desert sand gnashed between teeth and metal gleaming under the sun. He is tough as nails and meteorites, and after three hours of the most painful, stressful, awful experience Keith has ever gone through, he is handed a grimey, sticky creature that smells the way his hands do after handling copper change.</p><p>It’s ugly and swollen with amniotic fluid and, bizarrely, Keith thinks of the calf fetus kept in a jar of alcohol he once saw at one of the Garrison labs. This is his baby. Naked and wrinkled and barely ready for the world. </p><p>Keith looks at it, at this tiny being resting against his chest, this being that cannot hasn’t even opened its eyes yet but instead opens its mouth to let out a blood-curdling scream.</p><p>“Oh good,” Krolia says wryly. “Little one definitely inherited your lungs.”</p><p>“We need to clean the child,” one of the nurses says in apology and then lifts it away again, snatches it out of Keith’s grasp, and Keith makes a protesting noise at the back of his throat, trying to sit up.</p><p>Pain rips through him and Krolia immediately pulls him back down.</p><p>“Shh, it’s okay,” she tells him. “Look, they’re gonna clean your kit and then give it back. No need to worry.”</p><p>Keith still cannot help but anxiously peer across the room, trying to figure out what the nurses are doing. Cleaning, weighing, measuring, taking a blood sample, checking the lungs, counting the toes and fingers. The baby keeps crying, obviously unhappy with everything that is happening, and Keith’s heart clenches, wanting nothing more than to just leap from the bed and growl at everyone to go away.</p><p>Oh, he realizes because those must be the instincts he had been so worried about, and the relief crashes over him like a flood wave.</p><p>Other nurses are tending to him, cleaning up, making sure he has expelled all of the placenta, offering him ice chips, painkillers, transfusions, and Keith answers questions automatically without really keeping track of his answers. Everything seems to be happening in a haze, as though milkglass had been put up between him and everyone else. </p><p>The fog lifts a little when the nurse returns. The baby is clean now, wrapped up in cloth, a diaper put on, a band aid that looks much too large on a small hand where they took the blood. It’s still crying, more quietly now, more of a whimper, unhappily twisting its elbows as though the sudden amount of space were a bother.</p><p>“There you go,” the nurse says, gently placing the bundle on his chest again. “You will need to decide what we should put down for their sex.”</p><p>“Sex?” Keith asks, still slow to catch up.</p><p>The nurse nods. “The child is intersex. If that is the right term for Galra? I noticed your documents list you as male, so I wanted to make sure...”</p><p>So the child is alththalith, too, Keith realizes, and it’s a genuine surprise. Doctor Oobloo had offered to tell him during the ultrasounds but he had always refused, figuring it didn’t matter.  Truth be told, he would have thought that the Galra blood would be diluted enough to make that more unlikely, but evidently he was wrong about that.</p><p>“Is there a third sex option?” he asks, relieved to see the nurse smile encouragingly.</p><p>“Yes,” she says. “And it’s also relatively easy to change later, if the child identifies as something else. You should try feeding them now. Um. Do you need formula or anything else?”</p><p>She glances between him and Krolia, obviously a bit uncertain, and for a moment Keith doesn’t understand why. Oh, right. Half-alien patient. They probably don’t know just how Galra feed their young. </p><p>“I’m good,” Keith says. “Mom, can you-”</p><p>“Of course, kit,” she says and then helps him wrestle aside his hospital gown. </p><p>In the last weeks, his chest had first grown tender and then developed small breasts, something that freaked him out until Krolia assured him that they would go back to normal as soon as the child was weaned. But that is still a while away. For now, he has to figure out this whole breast feeding thing in the first place.</p><p>He feels awkward handling the child. It’s so fragile and grumpy and he maneuvers it around like an explosive, carefully supporting the head.</p><p>But he needn’t have worried. As soon as he has found a position that is somewhat comfortable for both of them, the baby opens its pink mouth and latches onto Keith’s nipple. Keith jolts a little because this sensation, too, is utterly unfamiliar and unexpected. But then he settles back and gets the first moment to really appreciate the fact that he is holding his child in his arms.</p><p>It’s overwhelming. The baby’s hair is dark and fuzzy, its fingers surprisingly long, pushing against Keith’s chest like a kitten. It’s pink all over, the skin almost translucent in places, blue and purple veins to be seen just under the surface. The eyes are mostly shut, lids still swollen, and the gaze underneath is unfocused.</p><p>Galra are born with their eyes closed, largely depending on scent, and Krolia had marveled when even as a newborn Keith would react to sources of light. She seems just as fascinated now, two of her fingers gently holding a tiny naked foot, watching as the baby is nursing.</p><p>“I wish your father could see this,” she sighs, with that rare desolate longing sneaking into her voice that Keith has only heard a few times since they found each other again.</p><p>“Yeah…,” Keith agrees. More so than for his own dad, though, he wishes his child’s father were here.</p><p>Unbidden, tears well up in his eyes and he harshly wipes them away, even as he realizes that this is finally the moment when everything catches up with him. The exhaustion of the birth, the hormones, the joy of laying eyes on his child for the first time, coupled with the pain of missing his dad, missing Shiro, missing any sense of direction in life… it’s a lot.</p><p>He runs his knuckle over a chubby cheek, ducks his head so he can nuzzle the soft hair.</p><p>“Hello, baby,” he whispers, his voice drenched with tears. “Welcome to the universe.”</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>Later, after Krolia has snapped a picture to send to Kolivan as she had promised, she wanders off to find something to eat. By this point, they have been moved from the delivery to a recovery room. The baby has gotten its first diaper change and Keith has gotten a moment to rest, and then Lance cautiously sticks his head into the room, looking a little disheveled and worn out.</p><p>“Did you sit outside the whole time?” Keith asks, bemused. It had been almost six hours now that they made it to the hospital and the plastic chairs in the waiting area could not be very comfortable.</p><p>“What was I supposed to do, go home and fiddle my thumbs?” Lance asks. He has stepped closer to the bed now, peering down at the baby who is dozing against Keith’s chest. </p><p>“Neither of us is gonna bite, you know,” Keith teases him, watching as Lance’s face turns into a grimace.</p><p>“Well, the kid doesn’t have teeth yet, but you do, so I am not so sure,” he grumbles but then pulls over the chair that Krolia had previously occupied. He is holding something in his hands, kneading it with nervous fingers, and it takes Keith a moment to realize that it is a stuffed toy.</p><p>“Did you buy something at the gift shop?” he asks and Lance looks up.</p><p>“Huh?” he says, his gaze following Keith to where the stuffed animal is sitting in his lap. “Oh. No, I bought that a while ago already. Washed it, too, so the funky smell is gone and everything.”</p><p>When he lifts the toy, however, Keith finds himself dumbstruck. This is like the crib all over again. Worse, possibly.</p><p>“Do you know how long it took me to find this?” Lance asks as though it had been a terrible chore. “I had to check four different stores until I got lucky, so you better appreciate it.”</p><p>He is holding a small grey hippopotamus. It looks different from the one Keith blearily remembers from his childhood. But Keith had made one throwaway comment about the stuffed animal he had had as a boy, and Lance had gone out to find a close approximation of it, and it is the gesture that counts, the one that has Keith’s heart squeezing painfully.</p><p>There is something devastatingly beautiful about realizing that, while his child will probably only have one parent, it will never be alone, even if something were to happen to Keith. There would be no orphanages or foster homes or social workers, no hunger pangs and locked doors and stolen hover bikes. The child would have Krolia and Kolivan and the McClains and probably a bunch of other people once Keith started confiding in the rest of his friends.</p><p>“Thank you,” Keith says, swallowing with difficulty. He quickly averts his gaze, looking back down at the baby, blinking until his gaze clears again. Lance does not call him out on it.</p><p>“Have you picked a name yet,” he asks instead and it takes Keith a moment until he can speak.</p><p>“Yeah,” he replies. He had started combing through online lists a few weeks ago, with a vague idea of what he was looking for. When he found it, it felt a little bit like standing in front of the Red Lion for the first time - that sense of connection, of meaning, of promise. When he first saw his child, after all these months, it was all of that and more.</p><p>“Their name is Kairi,” he says and, for the first time since maybe the crew members of the Kerberos Mission were announced, feels a wave of calm wash over him.</p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Kairi is a Japanese name and, depending on it's Kanji spelling, can mean ocean village.</p><p>I will be taking a bit of a break of this story while I work on new chapters and my other WIP. We will continue with Shiro's POV, find out what has been going on with him on his end and how he will react once he finds out he has fathered a child. I want to make a bit of a cut here so that I can still give you bi-weekly updates for the second half. So if you haven't yet subscribed to me or to the story, consider doing that in order to keep track of updates. </p><p>In the meantime, please let me know how you liked this chapter. I was so not planning on having an extensive description of the birth, but somehow it still happened. Hope that wasn't too squicky. </p><p>Do you think Keith will make a good parent? Since Lance has already proven himself to be a good uncle? Ngl, I am enjoying the Klance dynamic way to much. Friendship pairings have always been my favorite, and Keith and Shiro will definitely need to put in some serious work before they can consider each other as friends once more...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. preface</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So I was kinda absent way, way, waaay longer than I meant to. Originally, I thought I'd take a break of maybe a month or so, but then the Shiro's POV was giving me trouble, and I had run a little out of steam, and then life got really busy from September on. But now I am back.<br/>Since Shiro's story will delve more into post-canon events, updates will be slower-going. For Keith, I did two updates per week, but I will tentatively aim for once a week now. This is just a brief preface again, but the first full chapter will follow on Friday.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>“Night is my shepherd, moonlight is my guide</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You were close by, now the distance is so wide</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You found me blind, you taught me how to see</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now it’s so hard to have you away from me”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onsz1TbU-j4">
    <span>Black Dub - <em>Surely You Were Meant to Be Mine</em></span>
  </a>
</p><hr/><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro takes steps to stop the stagnation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a cooking class to learn new tricks and meet new people. He buys a brand-new hoverbike, powdery blue and gleaming. He dyes his hair in his bathroom at home, jetblack like it used to be before space swallowed him, and it makes the bags under his eyes look less glaring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Midlife crisis come early?” Curtis jokes, running appreciative fingers through the dark strands that are soft and smell of chemicals. “I like it,” he adds, pulling Shiro in for a kiss, and Shiro lets it happen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cooking class is over after ten weeks and Shiro does not sign up for another one. The white roots grow back in quickly and, after a month, Shiro gets another buzzcut that shaves most of it off again. The hoverbike sits in the garage, not forgotten, but set aside for the more sensible sedan he uses for grocery runs and the like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the end of each day, he returns to a condo that will take him several years to pay off. He sits at a dinner table with the man he plans to spend the rest of his life with. He goes to bed with a steady hum of thoughts trying to remind him that this is what he wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Questionaire for if you can't think of anything to comment:<br/>1) Have you missed meee?<br/>2) Are you excited for Shiro meeting his bastard child?<br/>3) Does slut!Shiro even deserve a redemption arc?<br/>4) Should Keith's second-born be half-Cuban?<br/>5) Will you ever be over how badly the show mangled Sheith (and literally everything else)?<br/>6) Have you, too, had yet another old OTP ruined in the form the the CW's Supernatural?<br/>7) Would Death not be kinder?<br/>8) Has Santa seen you when you're sleeping and knows that you dream about fictional characters doing the frick frack?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. one.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me just say, I am blown away by all the feedback the tiny little preface got. I am so amazed that people are still interested and invested in this story. So glad to get so many enthusiastic responses.<br/>Just to assuage your worries: The Cuban baby question was a joke. There won't be any Klance here. The endgame remains Sheith. But it's a bit of a way till we get there.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Here’s the thing: At various points throughout their friendship, Shiro suspects that Keith might be in love with him, but Shiro never has the time to be in love with Keith.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Originally, it’s not even a big issue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Shiro recruits him, Keith is mature for his age, mature in a way that teachers seem to mistake for obstinacy, mature because his life never gave him the option to wholly be a child. Shiro sees him and he sees a boy who is hurt and misunderstood. And he </span>
  <em>
    <span>relates,</span>
  </em>
  <span> because he, too, was once a boy like that, learning that one day his muscle atrophy might get so bad that he wouldn’t even be able to breathe on his own, that his heart might give out. Shiro sees him and sees a boy who beats sim scores and classmates and the odds. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he sees a boy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For all their similarities and inside jokes, there is a six year difference between them. Keith is a cadet, and Shiro is a graduate instructor. Keith is underage, and Shiro is his mentor. Keith is crushing on him like a cat walking over sticky tape - bewildered and reluctant -, and Shiro is in a relationship with Adam who cocks meaningful eyebrows but never says what they are both thinking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Shiro is stuck between a rock and a hard place: acknowledge the feelings Keith has steadily been developing for him but gently rebuff him in the same breath; or turn their friendship into something more professional and distant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Either scenario would hurt Keith, would shatter his trust in Shiro, or at least make him withdraw to protect himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Shiro… doesn’t want that. He likes having Keith so intertwined with his life, some strange amalgamation of little brother, protégé, co-pilot, and best friend. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some of his other friends at the Garrison don’t understand why Shiro would willingly spend so much of his precious time with some snot-nosed cadet. Why he doesn’t see him as an obligation, but as an equal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro confides in Keith with things even Adam doesn’t know about. When Shiro told Adam about his illness, Adam had frowned and nodded and squeezed his hand. When Shiro told Keith, Keith had told him a secret of his own, vulnerable but unflinching. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it’s no surprise that, when Shiro chose Kerberos, Adam had walked away but Keith had waited.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Keith is still underage, and the mission just around the corner. Shiro figures that spending a year off-planet will lead to one of two things: either Keith will outgrow his feelings for him, or he won’t. If it is the latter… Well. They’d navigate that meteorite storm when they got there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only they don’t get there. Instead, Shiro is tossed into an arena, has skin ripped off his flesh and limbs off his body and memories from his brain. He sits in a bleak cramped cell each night, wondering whether he will survive the next fight, whether Samuel and Matt are alright, whether everyone back home thinks him dead, whether the Galra are going to invade Earth next, whether there is anything he can do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whether Keith is grieving him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro gets the answer to his last question, when he crash-lands back on Earth and finds a Keith who is still familiar and yet different from how Shiro remembers him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Keith was a stray dog when Shiro first recruited him, then now he is a coyote. And although even a feral creature does not forget the hand that feeds it, Shiro thinks that, this time, he may have come empty-handed. This time, he can barely feed himself. This time, he might be the one that needs taming.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Where Keith’s love for Shiro seems to be a linear progression, steadily building, then Shiro’s is more like a game of Snakes and Ladders, constantly faced with set-backs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Between Shiro’s shuttle crashing in the desert and the Black Lion sending him to the astral plane, only a handful of Terran months pass. Months during which both Keith and Shiro are plagued by nightmares for different reasons. How can Shiro think about his potential love life, when the fate of the universe rests on his shoulders? When he doesn’t remember the details of how he became Champion? When he cannot be sure that he isn’t a sleeper agent, controlled by the alien tech embedded in his body?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, when Allura draws his conscience from the astral plane and puts it in a body that isn’t his, he once more has to live with a kaleidoscope of memories that do not fully make sense to him. And while he remembers that Keith choked out a confession, he also remembers trying to kill Keith. Remembers rejecting him and pushing him away and manipulating him and speaking over him and ignoring him and plain forgetting about him once the clone’s objective of destabilizing the team was fulfilled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What’s there for Keith to love? What is left of Shiro to love him back? How can Shiro possibly promise him anything, when he is just waiting for the next instance of being ripped from life as he knows it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Better to play it safe then, to color inside the lines of the familiar, even though his insides feel more like a Jackson Pollock, angry and abstract.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith never comments on Shiro keeping his distance. Maybe he doesn’t want to push. Maybe he has gotten too used to how dismissively the clone treated him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without the Castle of Lions, their slow journey home becomes an exercise in patience. Sometimes, Shiro will stay in the Black Lion, along with Keith, Krolia, and Kosmo, and the lack of privacy is a good excuse for none of their conversations ever tiptoeing into dangerous territory. The rest of the time Shiro diplomatically spends in the other four lions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It gives him the opportunity to witness their growth outside of life-or-death situations. Hunk seems to have developed nerves of steel. Lance has become quite a bit more suave and, when he sometimes flirts with Allura over the comms, Allura </span>
  <em>
    <span>flirts back.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith doesn’t flirt, or at least not in ways that Shiro notices. Flirting implies a level of superficiality, or playfulness, or tentativeness, and Keith is none of those things. Sometimes, he will be steering the Black Lion through the vast emptiness of space, and he’ll turn his head to the side, to better talk to Shiro, to look at him for a little too long-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eyes on the road, pilot,” Shiro says every time, casual, like a little inside joke, and Keith always gives a small smile and faces forward again, even though there is nothing much to keep his eyes on at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the road leads back to Earth, where the Galra must already be wreaking havoc, where another battle awaits, where Adam will welcome him with a curt but relieved version of ‘I told you so.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some of that happens, but only the worst parts. Adam is dead. Sendak tries to kill Shiro. The world watches as Voltron plummets from the sky like an old god.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro visits Keith at the hospital, but never stays by his bedside for long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On your way out already?” Krolia comments wryly, when they meet in the hallway even though Shiro only arrived thirty minutes ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Keith seemed tired,” Shiro replies smoothly. “I thought I’d let him sleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know he sat vigil by your side for hours, don’t you?” she points out. “Back after the whole clone thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He needs rest, not a watchdog,” Shiro counters, a little more tersely. He doesn’t think that Krolia of all people gets to hold lectures of abandoning Keith. “And I have business to attend to anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hope the rank is worth it,” she mutters with a glance at the new insignia on his uniform and lets him be on his way.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>While I had already written some bits from Shiro's POV back in summer, one of the reasons it didn't get underway was apparently because I started to tell his story starting after the war - and that felt off. So I reshuffled everything a little and added this shorter chapter to give some insight on his and Keith's relationship. And that made me realize a crucial thing:</p><p>While Keith and Shiro got ample pre-canon history, we barely got to see them interact in canon. <br/>Yes, S1&amp;2 were the golden era of Sheith because we could see how close they were already. But Keith wasn't fully fleshed out yet (possibly to maintain the mystique of his heritage), and while we got some great Sheith moments in S2, much of that was bogged down in the Galra reveal story line. Neither Keith nor Shiro were in  place where a relationship would have been an option.</p><p>And then S3-6 was all Kuron plus BoM Keith, followed by S7&amp;8 with barely any interactions at all. So while Keith got 2 extra years in the Quantum Abyss to quietly nurture his love, Shiro was dead/kinda dead A LOT. So maybe it’s no surprise he didn’t immediately jump at Keith’s confession - and maybe even ended up withdrawing. Homeboy is traumatized, yo.</p><p>The clone arc could have been so meaningful if there had been put more emphasis on Kuron specifically booting Keith from the team because Keith would have been able to tell that they are not dealing with the real Shiro. Or if the clone started having doubts/resisting his order because he, too, loves Keith. And then merging Shiro and the clone would have feel right because they were both connected by their feelings for Keith. Or if Shiro had at least tried to contact Keith through the astral plane while Keith was the head. Or-</p><p>I am ranting. I could write 99 canon divergent fics to explore all the 'what if' ways the show could have gone better. Alas, I offer you unplanned pregnancies.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. two.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Life after the war is like a mosaic. Sifting through the rubble, through the broken pieces of what used to be, and trying to fit them together into something different but beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro has never been an artistic guy, preferring function over form, so he ignores the obvious fissures, the gaps where single shards are poorly glued together with mortar. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That ideology can be applied to anything. To his body marred with scars. To the oversized tech arm attached to his shoulder. To the frayed ends of his psyche that he clumsily tries to mend the way he might reattach a button to his uniform. Always a ‘I’ll do it properly when I have time; now this will have to do’ and then postponing it, until another button comes off, or a seam tears, or the fabric wears through, and he has to acknowledge that it’s a lost cause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro is worn thin all over. If someone pulled at him, he might just come undone. Unravel until there is nothing but a heap of yarn left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But there isn’t much pulling at him anymore. The war is over. Shiro gets to breathe and slow down and pick up some of the pieces he lost along the way. He allows himself to deal with the loss, letting the grief wash over him. Adam. Allura. Old friends and mentors among the Garrison who were not so lucky as him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lucky. He is lucky. To still be alive and relatively whole. To be back home and, for the first time in years, able to predict what the next day would bring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everyone else seems rearing to go on even more adventures, albeit safer ones. Coran has New Altea to handle, Keith is off with the Intergalactic First Aid Relief, Pidge is cooking up the Stars know what crazy ideas with Matt, and even Hunk seems to have overcome his homesickness and has plans for building a culinary empire instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only Lance seems more content to remain behind, happy to be reunited with his family, declining Coran’s invitation to help out on Altea in a more permanent fashion, even outright rejecting a promotion with the Garrison. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro, in contrast, takes the promotion. It’s a position that will allow him to reside planet-side for the most part, and even then he makes it so that he won’t have to leave unless absolutely necessary. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to tell himself that there is no particular reason why he does this, but he cannot help but remember the time he fell off his bike as a boy and badly scraped his knee, something that left him crying and afraid to get back into the saddle for the rest of the summer. Come spring, the scars had faded, the incident was mostly forgotten and Shiro had been eager to get his bike from the shed again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is waiting for a spring like that now, a new start, a clean cut that separates the current him from all the past trauma. And the stars do not scare him but he does not want to get close to them anytime soon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’ll get better, eventually. Right now he just needs some time to breathe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While almost everyone that matters to him seems busy gallivanting through the universe, Shiro makes a conscious effort to try and build a home on Earth. There is much to be done, a lot of death and destruction to overcome, and Shiro figures it best to try and make connections while everyone else is still reeling as well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They need people like him, as Iverson had told Shiro when he first offered him the promotion, but the truth is that Shiro just needs people, period. He needs a project to focus himself on. That’s something that has always helped him get through whatever problems he was facing and let him come out on top. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he was twelve and doctors with grim voices gave him grim diagnoses, Shiro decided he would go to space before his body gave out on him. When he felt homesick at the Garrison and was missing Japan, he decided he would focus on his studies instead. When some of his peers became jealous of him for acing all flight simulations, he decided he would apply to be chosen for the new fighter jet team. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Patience yields focus, but tenacity does, too. That’s what got him the Kerberos mission. It’s what made him survive each fight in the arena and how he returned to Earth. It’s how he led Team Voltron and why he didn’t slide into madness on the astral plane. It’s the reason why still, stubbornly, infuriatingly, he is here and alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Shiro does what he does best: Pick up the pieces of himself that no one else even has seen come loose and marches on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rises through the ranks. He draws up plans and maps and schedules and ideas. He helps his superiors where he can and always takes care of his subordinates. He goes to the gym to stay in shape. He goes to grab drinks with his colleagues to build camaraderie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a bit mechanical. A bit like ticking things off a list. Has he brushed his teeth, made his bed, turned off the stove? Has he had a coffee with Montgomery, replied to Pidge’s message, scheduled a conference with Kolivan?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The lines between work and leisure blur when everything seems like a chore to him. He is charming, socially skilled enough to avoid being clipped with people, but he still catches himself treating his relationships like side quests in a video game - vaguely annoyed by the distractions, wanting to skip through the dialogues, ultimately unsatisfied when they do not seem to offer him anything of import.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hunk invites him to the opening of his first restaurant and he mostly goes because everyone and the press will be there and it wouldn’t do to not show his face. Lance asks him to come spend some time at his family’s farm and relax, and Shiro politely calls a raincheck on that. Keith is back on Earth for just two days and Shiro can only spare his lunch hour to get food at the canteen together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro never considered himself to be much of a leader, but he is becoming more and more aware of the fact that he might just be a terrible friend.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dating Curtis just happens. When asked later how they got together, that’s what they say, tell it like it’s a funny little joke. But it’s just the sobering truth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They knew each other before Kerberos. Curtis had been a year below Shiro, so they were acquaintances, but Shiro graduated and was dating Adam and spent most of his free time with Keith anyway. Curtis graduated, too, was stationed in Area 51 while Shiro was chosen for Kerberos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then the war happened, Curtis served under Shiro on the Atlas, they both were promoted, moved to different branches but stayed on friendly terms. And with rules against fraternization down one chain of command out of the way, Curtis asks him out on a date.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Shiro says yes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could claim that he isn’t aware of Curtis’ intentions, but Curtis clarifies it so that they are both on the same page, and so Shiro gets himself ready for what is possibly the first real First Date of his life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He and Adam made out one day and agreed to be a couple. And while Shiro had been with other people before Adam, that had always just been teenagers fooling around. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So yes, Shiro is in his late twenties and definitely not virginate, but still feeling surprisingly inexperienced. He lets Curtis take the lead who is just as awkward but in a charming way, nerdy because he likes maths the way other people might like sports, who laughs so hard he snorts his soda out of his nose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s nice. Adam had always had a more serious demeanor about him, often trying to appear older and wiser than he really was. He liked making plans and being in control of things, which made him a reliable partner but also one who didn’t adjust well to changes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was the one who proposed to Shiro. But he was also the one who left Shiro when Shiro’s plans for life didn’t fit his expectations.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t expect me to be here when you get back,” Adam had told him, as though Shiro chose Kerberos just to spite him. And then, when Shiro returned, Adam really wasn’t there anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Shiro has to hold on to what he has. The tangible. The immediate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When, toward the end of the date, Curtis reaches across the table to hold his human hand, Shiro does not pull away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro is a terrible friend and he knows it more and more with each day he does not tell Keith about Curtis.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even before, his conversations with Keith had been limited to almost exclusively talking shop, so suddenly addressing his dating life feels incongruous. So he just… doesn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He means to, during their meeting at the anniversary of the end of the war. The anniversary of Allura’s death. But somehow he cannot quite bring himself to do so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows that he is withholding information, lying by omission. He doesn't mention that the first time he slept with Curtis was the anniversary of the Kerberos launch when Shiro had felt particularly tender.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is that cruel of him, or kind? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is not… unaware of Keith still looking at him with his eyes like starstruck nebulae, of the gossamer hope in them. But by now it is second nature to act oblivious to the feelings Keith hasn’t bothered to try and hide in a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How much do you remember?” Allura had asked him after saving him from the astral plane, and Shiro had remembered months of leading the team on instead of leading them. He remembered flashes of rage and moments of terrible confusion. He remembered trying to kill Keith and Keith being so willing to die for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembered Keith plainly, desperately speaking of love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bits and pieces,” he had said, rubbing at his temple. “It hurts when I try to concentrate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Behind Allura, Keith’s gaze had shuttered, and Shiro had felt both shame and relief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s what happens on a balcony in Altea, the juniberry flowers opening their petals to the many moons of the planet, the night awash with their heady scent. Shiro, a tad bit drunk, foolishly reaching out to play with Keith’s hair, catching himself, pulling away again. Keith, not unlike a juniberry himself, glowing under the attention, shying away as soon as it is gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps it would have been better for Shiro to lose both his hands, to keep himself from touching. To gouge out his eyes, to keep himself from looking. To carve out his heart, to keep himself from feeling.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s relationship with Curtis is good. The very definition of steady. They go on regularly scheduled date nights, they make an effort to spend at least one full weekend per month together, and Shiro is first naturally introduced to the family when Curtis’ birthday falls on a Saturday and his sister and parents come down from Flagstaff. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s quiet and good and calm, the way a mature relationship should be. While their sex life is occasionally a bit more adventerous, their daily life is pretty vanilla, in a nice way. They don’t really fight about things, not like Shiro used to with Adam. Adam was a man who was pretty set in his ways, structured, but Curtis is much more agreeable and easy-going. Sometimes, he spontaneously texts Shiro and asks to spend the night or to join him and his friends for lunch, but he is never annoyed when Shiro has to blow him off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe there is something wrong with that. People who dance closely together are bound to step on each other’s toes once or twice. If you don’t, then perhaps that just means you are keeping your partner at arm’s length. Shiro’s arm’s length, thanks the detachable Altean tech, is pretty fucking long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s fine. Shiro likes the predictability of it. Likes knowing how Curtis likes his eggs and that he sleeps poorly around the full moon and that he’ll always send Shiro a text before bed, except for on nights when he gets too immersed in his online game.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s better than sending out a message and then having to wait around for days at a time until he gets a reply, anxiously asking himself whether anything happened, whether there was an accident or an ambush, whether Keith is dead or simply too busy, or- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. After literally more than a lifetime full of adventures and adversary, Shiro has found new enjoyment of evenings on the couch spent watching serialized crime shows or writing end of the month reports to his superiors. He does a casual morning workout to greet the day and alleviate back pain, not because he suspects he will be forced to run or fight for his life this week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s a good thing, mundanity. Or at least you realize it is, once you’ve known the opposite. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Down here, Shiro doesn’t have to be a champion or a hero or a leader. People salute and respect him, yes, but no one’s life depends on him. If he buys the wrong brand of cream cheese or makes a typo in his paperwork, the universe won’t collapse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro is a simple man with a simple life, even if his reputation tends to precede him. He makes simple yet sensible decisions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Curtis proposes, all traditional-like, over a candle-lit dinner at a fancy restaurant, just a little over a year into their relationship. The attending waitress congratulates them politely and serves them a fine wine on the house. Shiro and Curtis share a lava cake for dessert, take a cab home, and then have tender comfortable sex before falling asleep next to each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Between it all, Shiro kind of forgets to wonder whether maybe he should’ve taken the time to deliberate his answer more carefully.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Whew, so we finally got through all the canon One Year Later stuff, meaning we can move on to new plot and, I dunno, actual dialogue instead of 99% introspection. </p><p>Next chapter will be posted on Christmas Day. In the meantime, let me know what you think!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. three.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Meeerry Crisis! Most of the world is having a Corona Christmas, so I hope this will brighten your day a little. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro is a terrible friend, and terrible friends ask their best friend to be their best man in their wedding to someone else. Terrible friends act like nothing's wrong because, if they pretend that nothing is wrong, then nothing </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> wrong. Terrible friend get drunk off their ass during their bachelor’s night and then have only a vague memory of mediocre sex on a hotel sofa. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Terrible husbands promise to forever love and cherish their partner a handful of hours after cheating on them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Terrible men excuse themself from their bathroom to have a panic attack in the bathroom, and then are relieved that they can no longer spot their best friend in the crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On their wedding night, Shiro and Curtis fall into bed exhausted, but the next morning Shiro stares into the mirror above the sink and hates what he sees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hates the reflection staring back at him. He hates that he is looking at a coward who got cold feet before his wedding and promptly had drunk sex with someone else. He hates that this is the kind of man he has become. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has always been a monogamous person, had abhorred cheating. To do this to Curtis, and to Keith… He doesn’t recognize himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that is par for the course, isn’t it? His face is a little off, and his hair is all white. There are scars littering his body, most of which he doesn’t even recall acquiring. There’s a bulky piece of alien technology attached to his arm that makes him think of cyborgs from old sci-fi movies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside him resides the palimpsest of his own soul and whatever is left of the clone, their quintessence meshed together for all eternity. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is it the clone that makes Shiro pull himself together and walk out of the bathroom as though nothing were wrong? The clone who kisses Curtis awake and surprises him with breakfast in bed? The clone who thinks that ‘No one has to know’ because Keith will never tell anyone?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck yeah, bacon,” Curtis cheers, oblivious to Shiro’s turmoil, and digs in. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>They don’t go on honeymoon, because money is tight, and there is too much work to be done, even one and half years after the war ended. Maybe that is their mistake: No honeymoon in a relationship that didn’t have a honeymoon phase to begin with. After the weekend of their wedding, they return to business as usual.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That part is good. Shiro can concentrate on his work, doesn’t have to keep up a facade around Curtis. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ten weeks after the wedding, Shiro is given another promotion, and he takes his phone in hand to text the news to-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To who? He’ll tell Curtis in person when they get home. He could let Matt know, to taunt him a little, because Matt used to actually care that Shiro was ranked above him. Or Pidge, because she is the only member of Team Voltron who is pretty much glued to her phone and would probably read his message right away, even if she would forget to answer for several days.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Keith… Shiro cannot text Keith. Shiro hasn’t texted Keith about anything since the wedding. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has to scroll down a fair bit to find his chat with Keith among his recent contacts. Their last exchange had been on the morning before the wedding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Have you landed yet,’ Shiro had asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith had replied only a minute later. ‘I’m here.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, Keith isn’t here. Now, Shiro doesn’t text him. He just puts his phone back down and turns back to his computer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The panic attack during the reception was not the first Shiro has had in his life. Unfortunately, it also isn’t the last.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The attacks are always quiet. The kind that is not visible from the outside. He is not hyperventilating or crying or flailing. His pulse just picks up without warning, his vision goes a little wonky, and it’s a bit of an out of body experience, viewing himself from the outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro does not enjoy out of body experiences. He has had several of them, had literally been without a body when he had been caught in the astral plane, and he does not like it one bit. The memory makes him feel powerless, like a puppet with its strings cut. Like when Honerva’s hold over him had been broken and he was left with the sickening realization that he almost killed Keith.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, the attacks happen at random unpredictable moments that seem to have no rhyme or reason. Shiro can be standing in the middle of the supermarket, deliberating whether he should buy whole milk or skim, and the next he’ll have a one-hundred yard stare and be unable to move for the next few minutes. One time, his mother-in-law calls to ask whether he and Curtis want to come up for a visit sometime soon, and Shiro is only roused from his trance when the fire alarm goes off because he burned the chicken strips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is one good thing that comes out of the panic attacks, though: Shiro decides to go to therapy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s probably something he should have done from the beginning because, logically, he knows that he is suffering from PTSD and other issues. But first there was never any time, he thought he could just muscle through it, the Garrison resources were stretched thin, the wedding preparations were underways and… Well. Shiro figured he would be okay for a while longer. Just until the bulk of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>other </span>
  </em>
  <span>traumatized soldiers were taken care of by the Garrison counselors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The panic attacks show Shiro that maybe he isn’t okay. That just because both he and Curtis get nightmares, it doesn’t mean that that has to be their normal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Shiro makes an appointment with a licensed therapist, gets one pretty much immediately, quite possible because of preferential treatment due to him being a decorated war hero and all that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The therapist, Doctor Kapoor is in her mid-forties, got her license way before the existence of sentient alien life was confirmed, and is probably poorly equipped to deal with Shiro’s very specific set of issues. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she patiently listens to Shiro describe his panic attacks and night terrors, and prescribes him some medication as well as mild sleeping pills to at least take the edge off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is just to get you started,” she informs him. “The panic attacks are less likely to occur when you are more rested, and then we’ll try to get to the core of your struggles during our sessions. We’ll adjust your dosage as we go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So that’s what happens. Shiro sleeps a little better, except for on days after he had therapy where he has to actually verbalize some of the shit he has experienced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you try to get Matt out of the arena, instead of yourself?” Doctor Kapoor asks during one of their earlier sessions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was so scrawny back then,” Shiro explains. “He would’ve been eaten alive, quite literally.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about you then?” she prods. “You could have used a similar ploy to get yourself out, at least momentarily.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s opens his mouth. Closes it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think it occurred to me at that time,” he decides finally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm,” Doctor Kapoor hums and makes a note on her tablet, before subtly changing the track. “What did you fear most back then? When you were sent into the arena?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Shiro thinks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The… uncertainty,” he replies. “And… the knowledge that I would have to fight others to ensure my own survival.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By that point, he had already gotten an idea of the other captives. That they were all scared out of their minds, most of them civilians, even less prepared for this than he was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He swallows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I knew that I might have to kill,” he says. “And I knew that I was willing to do it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that scared you,” Doctor Kapoor concludes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that scared me,” Shiro agrees. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro takes steps to stop the stagnation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a cooking class to learn new tricks and meet new people. He buys a brand-new hoverbike, powdery blue and gleaming. He dyes his hair in his bathroom at home, jetblack like it used to be before space swallowed him, and it makes the bags under his eyes look less glaring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Midlife crisis come early?” Curtis jokes, running appreciative fingers through the dark strands that are soft and smell of chemicals. “I like it,” he adds, pulling Shiro in for a kiss, and Shiro lets it happen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cooking class is over after ten weeks and Shiro does not sign up for another one. The white roots grow back in quickly and, after a month, Shiro gets another buzzcut that shaves most of it off again. The hoverbike sits in the garage, not forgotten, but set aside for the more sensible sedan he uses for grocery runs and the like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the end of each day, he returns to a condo that will take him several years to pay off. He sits at a dinner table with the man he plans to spend the rest of his life with. He goes to bed with a steady hum of thoughts trying to remind him that this is what he wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His marriage comes up in therapy sooner than he would like, probably because she can tell that Shiro has been avoiding the topic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me about your husband,” she says, one of those open-ended questions that he absolutely loathes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” he says, his mind completely blanking. “He served under me on the Atlas, but we knew each other from when we were cadets. He’s a year younger than me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doctor Kapoor’s patient silence prompts him to continue, even as he is struggling to come up with anything relevant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve been married for half a year now, moved in together a little before that…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is he your first serious relationship since you left on the Kerberos mission?” Doctor Kapoor wants to know. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,”, Shiro says and does not think of Keith. “I… was engaged before. But Adam, he… broke things off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you ever reconcile? Platonically?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He died,” Shiro says curtly. “During the first Galra attack. He was a fighter pilot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see,” she says and makes another note, the memory of Adam reduced to a digitalized scribble. “Have you ever talked to Curtis about any of that? About Adam?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I… don’t see how that’s important.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doctor Kapoor’s head tilts to the side. “Your previous relationships? Or your experience with loss?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro rubs a hand over his face. “Curtis knows I was engaged before. And he knows I’ve lost people. I mean, who hasn’t?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now, see, Shiro,” Doctor Kapoor says diplomatically. “I think that what happened is that you shared some facts with your husband, but not feelings. To me it sounds like you are not only trying to strictly separate the phases of your life, but also different versions of you. But there aren’t any different versions. There’s just you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Shiro stares at her. Then he lets out a slightly manic laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” he says, finally. “I guess this is a good time to tell you about the clone.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s hair is still black when they return to New Altea for the second year anniversary, and everyone gently ribs him for trying to look ‘young and hip’. Everyone but Keith who turns out to be on an extended mission. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aw man, really?” Hunk says, clearly disappointed. “I think the last time I saw him was at the wedding. Can’t he at least do a video call or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kolivan let me know that the matter was quite high stakes,” Coran says, twirling his moustache with one hand while the other comfortingly claps Hunk on the shoulder. “I can’t blame him for being unwilling to spare one of his best agents for a mere courtesy call. Our friend Keith is doing his part to aid the universe so the rest of use can enjoy the fruits of his labor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not a mere courtesy call, and they all know it, but no one really says any more on the matter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lance, who would have been the most likely candidate to vocally complain about Keith’s absence, luckily only digs his hands into his pockets and kicks at the dirt. Shiro breathes a sigh of relief. If Lance made a fuss, then Shiro would be forced to say something on the matter and he really doesn’t want that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He isn’t sure whether he should believe the excuse of an extended mission. Two years after the fall of the Galra Empire, most other people and planets have regained their bearing. There shouldn’t be any missions so time-sensitive or top secret that even making a call is impossible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been just over half a year since the wedding. Keith and Shiro have not exchanged a single word. That means something, especially when there was a time when they used to see each other every single day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, Shiro tells himself, it’s good that Keith has found his place among the stars, alongside Krolia and Acxa and the rest of the Blades. Keith had always been a rolling stone, and he obviously still is. He is out there, scouting the edges of the universe, like he and Shiro used to fantasize about. He’s living the life he always wanted. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I am going to give you some homework,” Doctor Kapoor tells him one day. “I want you to go home and tell your husband that you love him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A week later, she asks, “Did you tell him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro shakes his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why not?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It just… didn’t come up,” Shiro says. There hadn’t been any post-coital cuddles. No post-it notes left on the kitchen table. And Shiro hadn’t wanted to say it just because his therapist instructed him to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What motivated you to marry him?” she asks now. “What were the changes you expected to come out of it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Shiro says haltingly. Simply going ‘Because Curtis proposed’ is probably not the best option. “There’s a certain promise in that, right? Of stability and… loyalty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stumbles over the last word. If Doctor Kapoor notices, she doesn’t say so. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s understandable that you want stability in your life, considering everything you have experienced,” she agrees. “Is that something that motivated your engagement to Adam as well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess so?” Shiro tries. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember his feelings for Adam before everything turned sour, and then bitter. Had they ever truly been sweet together? “We’d been… dating for a while.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been the next logical step, in a way. Just like marrying Curtis had been the next logical step, even if the other steps leading up to it had been a little hurried, to say the least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A shared home, a shared life. Maybe buy a house one day, get a dog. Ordinary people did that. Shiro was trying to be ordinary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once upon a time, he had wanted greatness, but greatness didn’t work out the way he had planned. He proved himself, and even cured his illness. Adam was both right and wrong to worry about the Kerberos Mission, but ironically he was the one who died first. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he met Curtis, Shiro had been cheating death for years, living on borrowed time. Hadn’t it been time for him to get to live for something beyond mere survival? After all the trauma and the heartbreak and the fighting and the losses, the best thing to do was… the opposite. Build a life. A family. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is this just… Shiro’s attempt of re-creating what he might otherwise have had with Adam?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro must have fallen silent for a little too long because, when he looks up again, Doctor Kapoor is looking at him in concern. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What you are telling me sounds like you are not leading a relationship, but filling a gap in your life,” she says, and it is perhaps the most direct she has been with him so far. “But that is not healing, Shiro. That is covering everything with duct tape and hoping that it will hold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Shiro tries to reply, he finds that he had to clear his throat a couple of times. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s, um, fine,” he manages to say at length. “Curtis and I are fine. I am… fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doctor Kapoor’s frown only deepens. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to send you the number to my colleague Doctor Chester,” she informs him and swipes across her tablet a couple of times. In Shiro’s pocket, his phone vibrates in response, even though he knows he should be turning it off during sessions. “It’s your decision whether you want to consult him, of course, but he is a relationship counselor, and I think you and Curtis would benefit from meeting with him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Shiro says. “Thank you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a normal night at the Shirogane-Malik household. They had pasta for dinner and are watching tv together. The commercial break comes on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we should get a divorce,” Shiro says, apropos of nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe not apropos of nothing, because Curtis barely even flinches.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he agrees simply and switches the channel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Look, I got you Shiro’s divorce Christmas. Because Santa knows that that’s what you were dreaming about. :)<br/>Ngl, I am mad proud of me that, somehow, the wedding AND divorce ended up in one chapter. Originally, I meant to split that up, but oh well.<br/>Questionnaire:<br/>1) Do you like your present?<br/>2) Should Curtis have gotten more screen time?<br/>3) Would you have wanted Shiro to detail the night before the wedding?<br/>4) Should more fictional characters in general just get therapy?<br/>5) Who’s your daddy?<br/>6) Should Sheith meet soon or nah?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. four.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you had happy holidays. I want to thank you so much for always writing such long thoughtful comments. I am honestly so happy to read all of them and see how everyone feels about the developments in the story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>
    
  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their separation is as uncomplicated as their getting-together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Curtis gets to keep the condo, so Shiro packs up his belongings - of which there aren’t too many to begin with - into a couple of boxes, and then puts the boxes into storage. They shake hands for goodbye, like polite business partners, promise each other that there are no hard feelings and that they will get the divorce proceedings handled smoothly. Weirdly, it feels much more solemn and honest than their wedding vows ever did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Shiro puts in his request for a sabbatical. That’s what he calls it in his head at least, because he isn’t an instructor at the Garrison, so it’s not actually a sabbatical. Just an extended break. An absence with official leave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t quit. He doesn’t run away. But he does take his powdery-blue hoverbike and decides to travel through the neighboring cities and states.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He goes to Phoenix first, then Tucson. Stays away from Flagstaff, for fear of running into someone from Curtis’ rather large extended family, drives to New Mexico instead. In El Paso, he makes the decision to take a trip down to Chihuahua. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gradually, the distances between his destinations become longer and longer. On Earth, he still can measure each trip in hours. Out in space, everything had taken months. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once in Chihuahua, he decides to stay in Mexico and just travel around. Fewer people here recognize him and he enjoys the anonymity. He speaks only a little Spanish, so no one tries to draw him into long conversations, and he enjoys that too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has some money saved up, especially now that the mortgage is off his plate, but sometimes he works as a day laborer in exchange for board and food, just to give himself something to do in between sitting on his bike. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a bit of a culture shock, to go from the structure of married life and working on a military base, to just letting himself go with a flow, never quite knowing where he will sleep at night or in what city he will end up next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the exact opposite of what he had been aiming for after the war, and certainly not what Doctor Kapoor had recommended. Shiro still takes his sessions with her, albeit via video call, and he keeps taking his medication. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whereas each day used to be the same, indistinguishable from the ones before, here everything is exciting and new. Gradually, his Spanish improves. His zest for life returns. He goes dancing, drinking. He flirts a little here and there, just for fun, without it ever leading anywhere. He is not ready to fall into bed with another man yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While he is staying in León, Curtis sends him the divorce papers. Shiro finds a local notary, signs everything, and promptly sends it all back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Thanks, man,’ Curtis returns with a thumbs-up emoji as if Shiro had agreed to let him borrow his car or something. Shiro treats himself to a mojito and lets a tiny Latina who reminds him of Pidge drag him around the dance floor of a club. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He drinks another mojito and thinks about the last time he got really drunk. He thinks about Keith and about how they have not talked since then. He wonders whether he missed his chance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because he cannot just contact Keith now, can he? Not so shortly after splitting from Curtis. That would seem like a callous attempt at reigniting whatever spark there was between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Shiro doesn’t want to get into Keith’s pants. He wants his friend back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s something Shiro is sorely lacking in. He was reasonably popular when he was still a cadet himself, but popularity did not translate well to making genuine connections. There was Matt but, even when they were both chosen for Kerberos, Matt never lost all of his starry-eyed adoration. And then, well… Then there weren’t any friends anymore. Just brothers-in-arms. Comrades. Fellow soldiers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro never connected with the rest of Team Voltron as well as he knows he should have. Part of that was the trauma, another his prolonged absence due to the clone. But there was also a reluctance. A fear of letting anyone new get close. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strangers tended to hurt him, in one way or the other. Even Adam, whom he had known, whom he had </span>
  <em>
    <span>loved,</span>
  </em>
  <span> had ended up hurting him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith, though. Even when Shiro’s look-alike had actively tried to kill him on that space station, Keith had only blocked, had only retaliated when quite literally pushed to the edge. Keith saved him. As many times as it took.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Shiro had repaid the favor by pushing him from his life in the most callous manner possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How does one recover from that? How does one make the first step?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a long time that evening, after Shiro has sobered up enough to not make any rash decisions, he sits in his hostel room and stares down at his communicator.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would be an easy thing to just send off a quick message. A hello. An apology. A photo of the sunset. Anything to throw water on a bridge that has been burning for too long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It shouldn’t be an easy thing, though. It should be the hardest thing Shiro has ever done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Shiro hates himself for what he did, then he can only imagine how Keith must feel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How do you feel now that the divorce is through?” Doctor Kapoor asks during their next video call. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Better, in some ways,” Shiro acknowledges. He finds it easier to talk to her from far away. As though that makes her a little less real. Or him. “Worse, in others.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Better how?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I no longer feel like I drowned my future in a mistake. Or like I am dragging Curtis down with me. I wake up and don’t dread the day anymore. I am… enjoying myself. I don’t recall the last time I really did that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nods with a small smile, but the furrow between her brow never leaves. “And worse…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I… have more time to think about other mistakes I’ve made,” he says. “Things I want to atone for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Such as?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, he deliberates. He could talk about wrong maneuvers he pulled as a commander. Orders that got people injured or killed. Sacrifices he was willing to make for the greater good. Decisions that came back to bite him in the ass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that’s not what truly occupies him, and he is pretty sure Doctor Kapoor would catch him in a lie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I… cheated on Curtis,” he admits. His face falls when he says it, his voice wavers. He has never said it out loud before, like a monster that will disappear if you don’t speak its name. “The day before our wedding.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bachelor party?” Doctor Kapoor guesses. There is no judgment in the words, her tone as bland and calm as always. For a brief moment, he hates her for that. He wants her to judge him. To look down on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he says, clears his throat. “I… got pretty trashed. Because I was nervous about the wedding. That doesn’t excuse it, I know. But it’s what happened.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doctor Kapoor doesn’t ask any follow-up questions but, as per usual, her silence is enough to prompt him into continuing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s worse is that it wasn’t someone random.” He is pretty sure that, if he had just slept with some bartender, he wouldn’t be beating himself up quite as much. “It was, um, my best friend. It was Keith.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, a look of surprise flickers over Doctor Kapoor’s face, before it’s gone just as quickly. Of course she knows who Keith is. The world adores the Black Paladin with his roguish looks and taciturn nature, with his underdog story and heart of gold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keith reads like the protagonist of an action movie or an adventure novel. Like someone larger than life, if you have only ever seen him from afar or on tv. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To Shiro, Keith has always seemed more like an Akoya oyster: a hard, almost deceivingly plain outside, but with soft vulnerable insides. Able to take all the crap that life threw at him and turn it into something precious. A hidden gem at the heart of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were only two ways to find out what lay at the core: You could patiently wait till the pearl revealed itself - or you could break the poor thing open. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his foolishness, Shiro had spent months and years gaining Keith’s trust, only to ruin it all in a matter of minutes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hurt him,” he admits. His Altean hand clenches around his knee so hard he hears the bone crunch. “I hurt him and I don’t think he wants to see me again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Doctor Kapoor agrees. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>think. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You think a lot of things, Shiro. You think you ruined your marriage, even though Curtis seems to have made mistakes as well. You think you are always running from your problems, but you are here talking to him, trying to get better and solve your problems. But you cannot make decisions for other people. Keith is likely hurt, yes. But you cannot just assume that he doesn’t want to try and fix things as well. And if you don’t give both of you the chance to find out, then the regret will always stay with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Shiro says because that is something he doesn’t think. It’s something he knows. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro spends days contemplating how to best reach out to Keith. Whether to make it casual or grand. Whether he should pretend like no time has passed or try and grovel right away. Whether perhaps he should try to arrange a personal meeting by contacting Kolivan or Krolia, though that would probably catch Keith at a disadvantage. Shiro doesn’t want that. He wants them to meet each other on eye level, after such a long time of looking away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once upon a time, they used to look into the same direction. They used to gaze at the stars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s what Shiro is doing tonight. He’s off in a smaller village where the light pollution is nowhere near as bad as in the big cities. The sky is clear and dark, the stars bright like little pinpricks, just as they were on nights when he took Keith out into the desert.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back then, Shiro used to give informal lessons like this, pointing out the constellations, telling Keith about the mythology behind the names. Like Scorpio, Keith’s star sign, sent by Artemis and Leto to kill the boastful hunter Orion who threatened to kill all creatures on Earth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Right now, facing Southwest, Shiro can tell that Venus would soon be crossing Scorpio. Only a matter of time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes his phone, fiddles with the settings until the camera can adequately capture the view of the night sky. He snaps a few photographs until he is truly happy with the result. And while he knows that a picture can say more than a thousand words, he also knows that, in this case, it would be nothing but an empty gesture if he didn’t back it up with some genuine emotion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I miss the stars,’ he types into the chat window, reconsiders, erases it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I miss you,’ he corrects, but that feels too straight forward, too blunt all out of the blue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘How’s space?’ Too casual. Too blasé.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Wish you were here.’ God, no, way too needy, especially after how long he has ignored Keith. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs, bites the inside of his cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hope your stars are as beautiful as mine,” he whispers to himself as he types the words and, there, that feels right. Acknowledging the distance between them but also their shared past. Well-wishes and reaching out a friendly hand, without demanding too much too quickly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sends both the message and photo before he can second-guess himself again. And he doesn’t mean to wait for a reaction because who knows what Keith is doing right now, he might be on a mission, he might be asleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then there are the little ticks that indicate the messages have been received and opened. That Shiro has not just texted into the void. So he sits there with hope in his chest at two in the morning, feeling more alive than he has in months, smiling down at his screen as he waits for Keith’s reply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only, it doesn’t come. Shiro took all his courage and Doctor Kapoor’s advice and made the first tentative step. And Keith, maybe not unexpectedly, leaves him on read.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro, it turns out, likes to torture himself. It’s a bit like poking your tongue at a tooth gap when you are a child. Or picking at the seams where your shoulder meets cool metal until your fingers come away russet red.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, once the dam has been broken, there is no stopping. Shiro ends up texting Keith every other night. It’s always variations of the same tune: a picture of the night sky accompanied by a single sentence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It reads more like poetry than prose. Disjointed thoughts and sentiments, none of them truly getting to the core of the matter or acknowledging the rift between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One time, on an unforgiving rocky planet, Keith had jumped across a canyon with nothing but spite and hope and determination. This is not quite that, but Shiro doesn’t quite have the words for it yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a photo of the crescent moon that night, its light so clear and bright it’s almost blue, illuminating the bulbous clouds surrounding it, tries out what to say in his head and in his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I wish I could talk to you face to face,’ he types finally and hits Send. He’s resigned to the fact that he won’t get an answer but there is also a tentative hope in him: If Keith doesn’t want to hear from him at all, he could just block Shiro. He hasn’t that yet, though of course there is just the possibility that Keith feels too guilty about cutting that last connection between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Shiro cannot blame him. For the longest time, Shiro could barely stand to be in his own presence either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the past few years, Shiro wasn’t particularly funny or attentive or reliable outside of his job. He barely even remembered the content of most conversations right after they happened, unless it included crucial mission details. It was as though his brain had been rewired to only retain what he needed to function, not what he needed to be happy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The difference between surviving and living. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Truth is, Shiro hasn’t tried to make much of an effort in any of his relationships in too long to remember. Not with Curtis or Keith, but with none of his other friends either. He used to get long excited text messages from everyone but, when most of Shiro’s responses were curt and to the point, the messages became shorter, more infrequent, the waits between them longer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro is sitting in a cage of his own making. Just that there are no bars and no spectators. In fact, there is no one at all. Even during his time as a gladiator, he had never felt this bereft.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a bit like running out of air while underwater. One moment he is fine and the next his lungs are burning; he knows what he needs, but the surface suddenly seems to be so far away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe this isn’t just about losing himself. Or even losing Keith. Maybe Shiro is just… disconnected from anyone or anything that ever meant something to him. His dream of going to space turned into a nightmare. His determination to save the universe paid off. Even his spite of doing something worthwhile before his illness made him an invalid has become obsolete after he was unexpectedly cured by melding with the clone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who is Shirogane Takashi when he is not the pilot of the Kerberos Mission or the Black Paladin or the Captain of the Atlas or the husband of Curtis Malik? Who is Shiro when he has been stripped bare of duty and responsibility and cause? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thing is… he doesn’t know. And after months of living on the road, being among people who do not know him at all, he has come to realize that he won’t find the answer by himself either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his hand, his phone pings, rousing him from his maudlin thoughts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, he is confused. Then he checks his messages. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There, unexpectedly, inexplicably, after days of trying and almost giving up, Keith has sent him a simple sign of life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We will soon,’ the text reads and Shiro, for the first time in a long time, sleeps easy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After months in Mexico, Shiro moves on. He’s had good times here, made fond memories, completely cut loose from his previous life. He finalized the divorce. He’s healing, in a way, and even Doctor Kapoor tells him he is making more progress than he did while in the US. But they both know that there is still a long way to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He told Doctor Kapoor about the text he received from Keith and she agreed that it was a good sign, no matter how their meeting ultimately went. In any case, it promised closure. However, as Keith was probably out somewhere in space, their reunion would most likely only happen when Team Voltron met again on New Altea. And that is still a little while away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro, however, is invigorated. For too long he thought that merely getting a divorce would be enough to set his head straight again. And he blamed his guilt and loneliness on how he had given Keith the cold shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But there is so much more than that going on. Shiro cannot magically wait for the big things to work out. He needs to be proactive in every aspect of his life. And that includes making an effort with </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>his friends. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro still has Lance’s address saved in his contacts from back when Lance had extended an open invitation to come visit him anytime. So that’s what Shiro decides to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes the jump to Cuba by ferry rather than braving it on his hoverbike, too familiar with deserts to truly trust the sea, and he then just travels around a bit like he did in Mexico for a bit, making short pit stops here and there, just enjoying the scenery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Varadero in particular is like a beautiful painting, everything drawn in bold vivacious colors. No wonder Lance got homesick so often. Both Arizona and most of the universe must have been a poor replacement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he finally arrives at his destination, he navigates his hoverbike up the driveway leading to the McClain farm. The property is obviously well taken care of, large trees shading the road, flowerbeds planted in between, giving everything a lush and inviting atmosphere. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a pang, Shiro remembers when Allura had mentioned the missing Altea’s juniberry flowers, with Lance awkwardly butting in that, if she wished, he’d love to show her his abuelita’s gardens one day. Back then, Allura had happily agreed, but Shiro has no idea whether she ever got the chance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lands the bike outside the house, it’s wooden planks warped and stooped with age, but the paint fresh and with dedication sitting in every nook and nail. The complete opposite of a semi-magical spacecraft, but loved and legendary in its own way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Much like Shiro, Lance, too, had withdrawn after the war, if in a different manner and for his own reasons. Maybe his way was better, more solid. Shiro had run into new distractions. Lance had run home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So that’s what Shiro expects to see when he climbs off his bike and dusts road dust off himself, taking off his aviators and brushing his fringe out of his face. He expects Lance surrounded by his family and by his animals and everything he loves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that’s what he sees, too, when he steps closer to the gate surrounding the garden beside the house: a tall slim man standing with his back turned, a straw hat on his hat, contentedly surveying the buzzing insects and flourishing fauna. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Shiro considers scaring the crap out of him by just flying his Altean arm over and giving a casual wave like that, but that would probably be a dick move, especially after showing up unannounced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he just raps his knuckles against the wooden gate and calls out, “Hey, Lance!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, when the man turns around, it’s Shiro who gets the surprise of his life. Because that isn't Lance. It’s Keith.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello, Shiro,” he says calmly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Some endings and news beginnings for Shiro - and for all of us. Hope that 2021 treats you more kindly.</p><p>Questionnaire: <br/>1) Did Shiro deserve his little vacation?<br/>2) Does Doctor Kapoor not get paid enough for this shit?<br/>3) Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?<br/>4) What’s on your apocalypse bingo for 2021?<br/>5) Do you enjoy this cliffhanger?<br/>6) Should Lance just deck Shiro?<br/>7) Is it hammer time?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. five.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Glad to see the cliffhanger knocked you out. Here's the thrilling continuation. :P</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Keith is almost two years older from when Shiro had last seen him. His hair is much longer, braided and pinned up at the nape of his neck under the straw hat. He’s wearing work boots and coveralls, with the top rolled down and the sleeves tied around his waist in lieu of a belt. He’s got a white t-shirt on and it makes his skin look tanner, in a way it never had been even in Arizona and certainly not in space. </p><p>The line of his mouth seems a little firmer and it takes Shiro a moment to realize that, unlike in most of his memories, Keith is not smiling at him. </p><p>Shiro, who had been mentally preparing himself for meeting Lance, is not at all ready to meet Keith. And so he promptly puts his foot in his mouth.</p><p>“I’m actually here to surprise Lance,” he says and of course has to make it sound like he doesn’t want to see Keith at all. </p><p>“He’s out running errands,” Keith explains blandly. “He should be back in an hour or so.”</p><p>“Oh,” Shiro says, awkwardly. He is not used to being out of words around Keith. Even if he hadn’t always said what he was truly thinking, for various reasons, he had still always known what to say instead - to calm Keith, to reassure or motivate him. Now, he flounders.</p><p>“I probably should’ve called ahead,” he excuses himself instead, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. He uses his human hand, but it still feels stilted and wrong. “But… I was in the area, so I thought I could drop by. Say hi.”</p><p>“I knew you were,” Keith says. “In the area, I mean.”</p><p>It takes Shiro a moment to understand just how Keith could have known. But then he realizes that he has been sending him pictures of the night sky wherever he went. Even if Keith hadn’t been familiar with constellations and the like, there are probably a dozen apps able to identify at least vague locations based on the stars and time of year. </p><p>“Did you-” Shiro starts, for a moment thinking that Keith got his messages and specifically returned to Earth to meet him here. But another look at Keith is enough to tell him that cannot be true. Keith looks like he has been underneath the Cuban sun for a while, and on this farm in particular. He looks too at ease here, in his well-worn boots and work clothes. Not like a tourist or even a student during some work-and-travel for his gap year. He looks like he belongs.</p><p>And Shiro, who first met Keith and immediately knew he belonged in a pilot chair, doesn’t know what to do with that realization.</p><p>“I’ve been here for a while,” Keith confirms because of course he can still effortlessly read Shiro while Shiro himself has been rendered illiterate.</p><p>So Keith had been here and he had known that Shiro was headed here as well. Which means that, when he sent Shiro a message saying that they would talk soon, he hadn’t meant for it to happen on New Altea. He had meant this. </p><p>In that moment, they are interrupted by Kosmo suddenly teleporting into the space between them. He doesn’t growl and his hackles are not raised, but there is something undeniably protective about the gesture. As though he does not trust Shiro. Or at least does not trust him with Keith.</p><p>“Hey, boy,” Shiro says nevertheless, offering Kosmo the back of his hand to sniff. He isn’t afraid of the wolf, just a little saddened. Another damaged friendship he hadn’t even considered before.</p><p>Keith, however, barely seems to have taken note of Kosmo’s behavior. Instead, he has taken half a step back so he is turned around facing the garden instead of Shiro. For a second, Shiro isn’t sure what distracted him. But then he looks closer and sees a small child toddling down the path, dressed in buttercup yellow dungarees.</p><p>At first Shiro is sure it must be one of Lance’s nephews or nieces, but then the child makes a beeline for Keith, accidentally bangs its head against Keith’s knee, and then begins to just climb along Keith’s body like a little monkey might, unnaturally fast and nimble.</p><p>“Hava!” the child squeals happily, right into Keith’s ear, perched on his hip and holding on to his shirt. It can’t be more than a year old and looks perfectly human, but there is no way a human child can move with such agility. So it must be alien, at least to some degree.</p><p>And Keith himself seems so used to it, one of his arms supporting the kid’s rump, turning his face to nuzzle the dark hair, and, very quietly, it dawns on Shiro that this is not just a random child. It’s Keith’s. </p><p>It takes him a moment to compute because running into Keith is one thing, but running into Keith who is apparently now a parent is something else entirely. And so he can only stand and watch, open-mouthed.</p><p>The kid seems to be done babbling at Keith and just sticks its thumb in its mouth, before turning its big marble eyes onto Shiro. They are deep purple, like amethysts, and Shiro finds himself a little short of breath.</p><p>He swallows, very aware of Keith’s challenging gaze on him.</p><p>"Boy or girl?" he asks because he cannot think of anything else, and Keith looks away for just a  moment.</p><p>"They are like me," he says, quietly. "I want them to decide for themself, when the time comes. If they want to decide at all.”</p><p>"Oh," Shiro says, intelligently. "What's their name?"</p><p>"Kairi," Keith replies.</p><p>"Oh," Shiro says again. "Is that... a Galra name?"</p><p>"No." Keith shakes his head. "It's Japanese, actually."</p><p>Kairi has gone over to pulling down the collar of Keith’s shirt, trying to stick their face inside, for whatever reason.</p><p>“No, Kairi, stop that,” Keith admonishes, plucking his shirt back into place and then holding Kairi’s tiny hand so they can’t keep wriggling.</p><p>“Noo,” Kairi protests with the kind of vehemence that suggests it is probably their favorite word. “Hava!”</p><p>“They keep saying that,” Shiro notices. “What does it mean?”</p><p>“It’s their name for me,” Keith explains and then, after a pause during which he does not take his eyes off the child. “It’s a Galra word for the birth parent.”</p><p>For a moment, Shiro doesn’t understand what any of that means. Then everything clicks into place so quickly, he doesn’t even have time to catch his breath.</p><p>Keith with a child. Keith with a child that he apparently did not sire but bore. Keith with a child that he bore one year ago. Keith with a child that he bore one year ago, roughly nine months after the last time they saw each other. Keith with a child that he bore one year ago, roughly nine months after the last time they saw each other, when they had sex.</p><p>And Shiro doesn’t want it to make sense but he distinctly remembers how wet and ready Keith had been underneath him. He remembers that he had been drunk enough to not remember using a condom. He remembers forcibly not letting himself think of that night again, as though willful ignorance could right the wrongs he had done both Keith and Curtis.</p><p>Shiro inhales harshly.</p><p>“They-“ he says and doesn’t know how to continue.</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith replies, still refusing to look at him, but at least he doesn’t deny it. “I know it must be a shock.”</p><p>Shock is an inadequate word but still the one that is closest to what Shiro is feeling. Disbelief mixed with bone-deep numbness. He feels like he is made of glass and the tiniest impact might irrevocably shatter him. </p><p>Keith, however, just sighs. </p><p>“Let’s go inside,” he says. “I don’t like Kairi being out in the midday heat too long.”</p><p> </p><p>↔</p><p> </p><p>The McClains seem to be busy with their daily labor on and around the farm, so the house is completely empty when they step inside. Shiro isn’t sure whether to be grateful for that or not. </p><p>Keith seats him on the big couch in the living room and then wanders off into the kitchen with Kairi, only to return with two glasses and a carafe balanced on a tray.</p><p>He serves Shiro one-handed pouring him ice-cold lemonade, while the other arm is still wrapped around Kairi. Kairi doesn’t look like they need it, clinging on to Keith like a tiny determined koala.</p><p>Then Keith sits down not at the end of the couch but in the armchair on the other side of the table, putting a physical barrier between them. Kosmo is still there as well, watching Shiro with narrowed eyes like a guard dog might.</p><p>“I assume you have questions,” Keith opens which is the understatement of the century. “So let me start by saying that all of this was a surprise to me as well.”</p><p>He runs an absent-minded hand over the back of Kairi’s head, holding them close.</p><p>“I didn’t know that I could conceive,” Keith says and it sounds like a justification. “I didn’t even notice I was pregnant until four months in. And then I was- I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stay out with the Blades like this and I had nowhere else to go. So I came here.”</p><p>Shiro’s mouth opens.</p><p>“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asks but, as soon as he hears the words, he knows how inane they sound. He had been married to Curtis. God, he had gotten married to Curtis a few scant hours after he… apparently fathered a child with Keith.</p><p>“Why didn’t you tell me?” he amends instead. His voice is faint, like Sibyl growing weaker over the years.</p><p>When Keith finally looks up at those words, his gaze is cutting.</p><p>“What would I have told you, Shiro?” he asks, venomously. “That my obscure alien heritage has come back to bite me in the ass once more? And what would you have done? You built a life for yourself, you have a husband-“</p><p>“Had,” Shiro corrects automatically and Keith cuts off mid-growl.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Had a husband,” Shiro clarifies, his mouth dry. “Curtis and I got a divorce.”</p><p>Keith stares at him, wide-eyed, like his entire worldview is rearranging itself. Shiro knows the feeling rather intimately.</p><p>After a long moment, Keith swallows, ducks his head.</p><p>“Did he find out?” he asks and it takes Shiro a second to understand.</p><p>“No,” he says mildly. “I- It was one of my reasons, in a way, but there was a lot going on. We realized we weren’t really a good fit and I… I felt like I had rushed into things.”</p><p>He remembers everyone’s surprise when he had told them about the engagement. Only the memory of Keith is a little blurred and indistinct. He thinks Keith congratulated him. He must have. </p><p>He places his hand over his mouth, breathes. He hasn’t had a panic attack in a while and he certainly doesn’t want to get one right now. </p><p>“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asks, as calmly as he can. He thinks there is still a tremor in his voice. This is one of those things he had tried to avoid by getting a planetside job and entering into a steady relationship; sudden upheavals and changes always mess with his head.</p><p>“I was,” Keith says. “Soon. At the next reunion. But then… you started texting me. And I figured I might as well do it now.”</p><p>Abruptly, Shiro realizes that this is the reason why Keith had not been on Altea for the last reunion. Because Keith was pregnant. Or maybe he had just given birth. “Kolivan knew.”</p><p>Keith nods slightly. “And my mother. But no one else, apart from Lance’s family.”</p><p>There is something relieving about that, at least. Shiro doesn’t know how he would have reacted if the Holts and Hunk and everyone had known while he was the only one kept out of the loop.</p><p>Still, that’s pretty much the only thing that is relieving. Everything else is just… shocking to the core. Earth-shattering.</p><p>It’s like everything he has been slowly trying to work through in therapy, now turns out to be ten times worse: He didn’t just fuck Keith and then ignore him, he impregnanted him and left him to fend for himself. He isn’t just a terrible friend, he’s a deadbeat dad. And the past few months, while Shiro was off enjoying himself in Mexico, Keith was raising their child. </p><p>That’s what it boils down to. Shiro may have sired Kairi, but he is no parent.</p><p>He clenches his fists, relaxes them again.</p><p>“May I hold them?” he asks. His voice sounds a little hoarse but his eyes on Keith are steady. He is aware that he might get turned down, put in his place, but he also knows that not trying at all would be the worse option.</p><p>Keith licks his lips, hesitates for just a moment.</p><p>“Yes,” he allows finally. Maybe he decided right this moment, or maybe he thought about it in advance, when he thought about how their eventual meeting might go. In any case, Shiro is grateful, waiting patiently as Keith stands up and rounds the table to place Kairi on his lap.</p><p>Shiro admittedly has next to know experience handling children under the age of fourteen. He knows that you are supposed to support babies’ heads, but Kairi seems to be already past that age. </p><p>In fact, when Shiro just carefully puts his palm on Kairi’s back, Kairi looks up at him with a bit of a frown, an eerily familiar look that Shiro has seen on Keith’s face many times. Is Kairi a suspicious child? Or can they simply tell that Keith is uneasy around Shiro, much like Kosmo can?</p><p>“They look like you,” Shiro comments without thinking and, when he glances over, notices how there is something like vulnerable surprise on Keith’s face.</p><p>“Strange,” Keith mutters, lowering his eyes again. “I always thought they look like you.”</p><p>Yes, perhaps, if Shiro looks closely, he can find traces of himself in Kairi: the skin that is a little darker than the natural pallor Keith used to sport, the hair more black than brown. But everything else looks an awful lot like Keith. Bold eyebrows and irises like purple nebulae. A full mouth and long lashes. The rest is too much still like a child’s to determine anything else, chubby hands and cheeks, a button nose. </p><p>Kairi’s got their fingers in their mouth now, unhappily chewing at them with tiny white teeth. Shiro wonders about that as well. He doesn’t know when teething normally starts in humans, but there is something slightly disconcerting about a small child with a mouth full of pointy teeth.</p><p>Eventually, after a long minute of Shiro just awkwardly rubbing Kairi’s small warm back and not really knowing what else to do, Kairi’s face scrunches up a little. </p><p>“Hava,” they say, twisting away from Shiro and reaching for Keith. Shiro fully expects for Keith to just stand and pick Kairi up again. He does not expect Kairi to just jump off his lap and scramble over the coffee table to get to Keith, almost knocking over the still untouched glasses of lemonade.</p><p>“Kairi,” Keith says in exasperation, even as he opens his arms to accept the child back. “No climbing over furniture. Abuelita Fernanda doesn’t like that.”</p><p>There is a sting in Shiro’s heart and it takes him a moment to pinpoint why. It’s not just that Kairi is clearly uncomfortable to be in his presence. It’s that Lance’s mother is considered to be their grandma, while Shiro only found out Kairi existed half an hour ago.</p><p>In that moment, Kosmo lets out a little huff and turns his head into the direction of the hallway. A few seconds later, there is the sound of the front door opening.</p><p>“Keith, you in?” Lance’s voice calls out, making a ruckus as he seems to kick the door shut behind himself and set some things down. “There’s a hoverbike parked outside. Did anyone drop by?”</p><p>“We’re in the living room,” Keith calls back plainly, and Shiro doesn’t even get the chance to prepare himself before Lance steps through the doorway and catches sight of them.</p><p>“What the-” Lance splutters, just barely stopping himself from swearing as he does a double-take. “Shiro?! What are you doing here?”</p><p>He sends a frantic look at Keith and Kairi, probably trying to figure out how much Shiro already knows. Keith, however, just waves him off.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he says. “I told him.”</p><p>Immediately, Lance’s mouth drops open. “What? Just like that?”</p><p>“I was going to do it soon anyway,” Keith shrugs. “A few weeks don’t make much of a difference.”</p><p>He says it’s like it’s no big deal. As though this secret hadn’t totally sent Shiro reeling. </p><p>But here is another question answered: apparently Lance didn’t know that Shiro had been trying to get in contact with Keith. He obviously hadn’t known that Shiro had been on his way here. So at least that part of the surprise visit had worked out. </p><p>Maybe Shiro should count himself lucky that it happened here and now, instead of on Altea, with the rest of their friends around to witness it. That would have made the reunion more awkward for everyone involved.</p><p>Lance, however, doesn’t really seem mollified by Keith’s reasoning. If anything, he seems more aggravated, almost hostile in the way he frowns at Shiro. Keith, it appears, is surrounded by guard dogs, and that is not something Shiro could have envisioned.</p><p>“Can you take Kairi upstairs?” Keith asks Lance. “I think they need a nap.”</p><p>For a moment, Lance seems ready to object to this obvious ploy of getting him to leave the room. But then he sighs, his shoulders slumps, and he gives in.</p><p>“Come here, buddy,” Lance says, easily lifting Kairi into his arms. </p><p>“Tío,” Kairi says, a little petulantly, but fists their hand in Lance’s shirt, as though they have done it a million times. Lance sends Keith and Shiro a last glance over his shoulder, but then goes and carries Kairi up the stairs. </p><p>“Kosmo,” Keith says and gives the wolf a meaningful look. </p><p>Kosmo, like Lance, looks not happy about the implied order, but then snorts out a breath and is gone in the blink of an eye, presumably also teleported upstairs to give them some privacy.</p><p>Shiro tries not to think about how, the last time he and Keith had been alone, they had spent an inadvisable night together and created a new life. Stars. Shiro still cannot wrap his head around it.</p><p>For years he had known that Keith was intersex, but intersex could mean a lot of different things. In humans, it generally didn’t mean fathering or carrying a child was possible at all, as far as he was informed. It’s not like Keith had ever been overly eager to discuss such intimate matters with him, apart from sharing that little detail with him in the first place. </p><p>And it hadn’t mattered. That Keith was intersex or a Galra or a troublemaker. Keith had always just been Keith. Now he is… the other parent of Shiro’s child.</p><p>Shiro lets out a long slow breath.</p><p>“Since you decided to tell me,” he tries tentatively. “Does that mean you want me to be part of Kairi’s life?”</p><p>Keith fidgets for a moment as though, without Kairi there to occupy him, he had to stop himself from defensively crossing his arms in front of his chest.</p><p>“I didn’t know one of my parents growing up,” he says eventually. “I am not about to deprive my own kid of theirs.”</p><p>“So what is this, Christmas and birthdays?” Shiro asks and then regrets it because he doesn’t even know Kairi’s birthday.</p><p>Keith shrugs, and Shiro cannot tell whether he is just trying to look unaffected. “I’ll take however much or little you wanna give. Just… don’t half-ass it. Don’t treat it like a chore. Give it some thought and then… decide whether you want in. If not… we’re better off without you.”</p><p>Over the years, Shiro has always appreciated Keith’s honesty but now the words hurt. It is obvious that Keith is not doing this for Shiro’s sake, but for Kairi’s. And it’s no surprise, really. So far, Keith and Kairi seemed to have been doing quite well on their own; at this point, Shiro is only an outsider messing up their routine.</p><p>“Okay,” Shiro says because he does appreciate being given the chance to catch his breath and really think about the repercussions all of this will have on his life. “Okay, that’s… Thank you.”</p><p>“I just want you to know that I’m not asking for charity or…,” Keith seems to deliberate on the right word, finally decides on, “Pity. This isn’t about me, or you. I just just want what’s best for Kairi.”</p><p>The implications are clear. If Shiro does not play his new role well, then he will be unceremoniously cut out of their lives again. And he is pretty sure that that separation would hurt a fair bit more than his divorce from Curtis. </p><p>For a few moments they sit in silence and Shiro understands that his visit to the McClain residence has come to an end. He hasn’t met any of Lance’s family, hasn’t even so much as shaken Lance’s hand. Or Keith’s. </p><p>“I should probably head out,” he says preemptively, to save Keith’s the trouble of kicking him out. Or, even worse, feel the need to invite him for dinner. “I need to find a hostel in the area.”</p><p>They both rise. The lemonade sits between them, by now probably grown lukewarm. Keith gestures him to the door that leads into the hallway from where Lance had previously come. </p><p>The entrance area around the front door is both messy and tidy, like a small contained chaos. There are dozens of shoes and jackets upon shelves and hangers. An umbrella stand. A small bench to sit on. A neatly labeled key rack. But still Shiro’s eyes immediately zero in on a tiny neon pink pair of rubber boots sitting by the wall.</p><p>Shiro opens the door, steps outside into the sun, takes a deep breath, turns around again to face Keith. He tries to think of all the things he met to say when they met again, things like ‘It’s good to see you’ or ‘I’m sorry I took so long’. But none of them seem right when there are suddenly even more issues to work through.</p><p>“Um. Talk to you soon?” he tries, wincing at how ungainly it sounds.</p><p>“Yeah,” Keith says plainly and closes the door. </p><p> </p><p>↔</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Originally, this chapter was meant to be much longer, but then I didn't finish the second half in time, and I figured it was already long enough to warrant its own update, not to mention that this was probably a good point to leave you on the edge of your seats again.</p><p>Questionaire:<br/>1) Since Lance didn't get to deck Shiro (yet), should Kosmo get to bite him?<br/>2) Have you seen any snow this year yet?<br/>3) Did you hear that in the year 2021 of the Lord, Voltron was apparently trending on Twitter?<br/>4) Is Kairi a good baby?<br/>5) Who else is imagining Keith as the most beautiful half-human being on Earth?<br/>6) What is love?<br/>7) Are you reading fanfiction to distract you from the real dystopia that is the news everywhere?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. six.</h2></a>
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  <span>Shiro does get a room at a hostel in town, just to bridge the next few days before he knows where he’ll continue from here. He settles in, focuses on organizing his things with his ingrained military neatness instead of letting his thoughts roam. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once he is done, however, he goes out, wanders the streets for a while until he finds a bistro where he orders some lunch. While he eats, he pulls out his phone to message Doctor Kapoor’s practice and schedule an emergency session. Luckily, he gets a swift reply that they had slot free that very evening, which calms Shiro a little. He doesn’t think he should be making any decisions right now without at least some guidance.</span>
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  <span>Unfortunately, he has barely even finished his meal, when his phone beeps again with another incoming message. He flips it over to glance at the screen, only to see that it is a curt message from Lance.</span>
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  <span>‘I want to talk to you. Where are you?’</span>
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  <span>That… doesn’t exactly sound friendly. Though maybe that much was apparent from when Lance had first found Shiro sitting on his couch and looked none too happy about it. </span>
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  <span>And Shiro isn’t sure whether he has the strength to go through another emotionally draining conversation today, but it’s not like Keith was exactly forthcoming on a whole lot of stuff. Maybe Lance would be willing to play mediator for a bit. </span>
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  <span>So Shiro sends him his location, orders himself a sweet rice pudding for desert as well as a coffee, and leans back to relax as much as he can under the circumstances, just watching the people pass by on the street as he waits.</span>
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  <span>Lance shows up some twenty minutes later. He’s dressed in skinny jeans that make his legs look longer than they already are and a navy blue button down that makes him look like more of a yuppie than a farmer. He must have changed outfits before he came here.</span>
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  <span>Lance takes a moment to tip down his sunglasses and survey the tables of the bistro, zeroing in on Shiro when he spots him and making his way over. </span>
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  <span>“Hello, Lance,” Shiro says warmly. The situation isn’t the best but he did mean to make an effort with his other friends as well, so he shouldn’t waste this opportunity. “It’s good to see you.”</span>
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  <span>For a moment, Lance purses his lips, as though he had bitten into a sour lemon. Then he relaxes.</span>
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  <span>“Yeah,” he says, pulling out the chair opposite of Shiro and sitting down. “You, too, man.”</span>
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  <span>The elderly waiter who had been serving Shiro before comes over to take Lance’s order, and Lance twists around in his chair to better speak with him, a brief friendly chat before Lance finally settles on an espresso and some churros. </span>
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  <span>With a start Shiro realizes that Lance doesn’t look like a boy anymore. He is still meticulously clean-shaven, his eyebrows plucked to perfection, his hair close-cropped and conditioned. But his jaw is a little broader, his cheeks a little leaner, and he seems to have grown into his ears.</span>
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  <span>In another life, Shiro likely would have tried to hit on a handsome guy like this, tried to strike up a friendly conversation and test out the waters. But that is not this life. </span>
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  <span>In this reality, Shiro and Lance are former brothers-in-arms and war heroes, and Shiro used to defend Keith from Lance’s heckling, but now their roles may well be reversed, with Shiro cast as the outsider who threatens the close friendship between Lance and Keith.</span>
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  <span>“Does Keith know you’re here?” Shiro asks when the waiter has left again, because he doesn’t want to go behind Keith’s back to have this conversation. Or get Lance into hot water for coming here.</span>
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  <span>Lance, however, gives a bit of a violent shrug. “He saw me leave. He didn’t ask, but I think he has a pretty good idea. I wasn’t exactly happy about you showing up like that, in case you couldn’t tell.”</span>
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  <span>“You did extend an open invitation,” Shiro points out carefully. “I think the exact words were ‘Drop by whenever, today, tomorrow, in five years’.”</span>
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  <span>“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Lance waves him off. “I know. I’m mostly angry at myself. I should have remembered that. But, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d actually take me up on that offer. At least, not after all this time.”</span>
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  <span>“I wasn’t very good at keeping in touch, huh?” Shiro muses quietly, and Lance cocks an unimpressed eyebrow.</span>
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  <span>“No, you really weren’t.”</span>
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  <span>Well, Lance has never had much of a filter; maybe Shiro should just appreciate having someone who isn’t his therapist being this frank with him.</span>
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  <span>“Okay,” Shiro says. “You wanted to talk to me. So lay it on me.”</span>
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  <span>“Where to start?” Lance says, because he is still a little shit, and kicks out his legs underneath the table. “I’ll go with the shovel talk: If you ever hurt either Keith or Kairi, in whatever manner, I will personally hunt you down and kill you. Understood?”</span>
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  <span>“Yes. But that is not what I am planning to do,” Shiro says. “I am hoping to do better.”</span>
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  <span>“Well, you didn’t plan on it last time either, I assume, but it still happened,” Lance points out scathingly. “Congratulations on the divorce, by the way. Who called it quits first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was a mutual decision,” Shiro returns tersely. He hadn’t expected Lance to come on so strong. “Both Curtis and I had our own private doubts for a while. We’re still friends, though.”</span>
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  <span>“Oh, good for you,” Lance says, not even bothering to hide the sarcasm. “Glad to see you managed to stay on good terms with at least one of your flings.”</span>
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  <span>Shiro digs his fingernails into his palm and breathes out slowly. He had forgotten how aggravating Lance could be sometimes. Usually, that behavior had been directed toward Keith; Shiro himself had mostly been a witness, not a direct recipient.</span>
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  <span>“Look,” Shiro says. “I know you have a whole lot of anger saved up. I am not asking you to just… accept me into your fold without some healthy suspicion. But I literally just found out that I am a father. Can we please put everything else on the backburner for now?”</span>
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  <span>For a moment, Lance looks like he wants to object to that, just out of principle. But then his shoulders slump. “Fine. Okay. Whatever. Congratulations on the baby.”</span>
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  <span>“Thank you,” Shiro says, almost spitefully, but there is a flutter in his chest as well. He is a father. He has a child. Beyond all the mistakes and the missed chances, this is something to be happy about. He just needs some more time to digest it all.</span>
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  <span>“Can you tell me a little about it?” Shiro asks. “I don’t… I don’t even know how old Kairi is exactly.”</span>
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  <span>Lance sighs, but complies. “Keith gave birth a little after the last reunion. Kairi is a little over ten months old now.”</span>
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  <span>Ah. Shiro would have pecked them older, what with them already being so agile. So that was definitely a Galra thing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When’s their birthday?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“April 16th,” Lance answers. “I’m not telling you anything more about the birth and stuff, though. That’s up to Keith.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a strange thought, to be sure. Shiro’s brain still hasn’t fully computed the fact that he has a child in the first place. Thinking about how Keith carried and birthed that child is absolutely mind-boggling. Because, yes, in the past few years Shiro has seen a lot of things that he previously thought impossible. But it’s different when he hasn’t witnessed it with his own eyes. It’s different when it’s something that has such a life-changing effect.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did he come here, specifically?” Shiro wants to know because that part also still baffles him. Lance and Keith’s relationship may have improved over the years, but they had never been thick as thieves. If anyone, that had been Hunk and Pidge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lance seems to know that as well because he just gives a one-shouldered shrug. “He didn’t have too many options, really. Hunk is busy with his culinary empire. Pidge is working too close with the Garrison. Keith was afraid word would get back to you before he was ready. He wanted to be planetside, and Earth was the most obvious choice. But he needed a support system and everything, and I was right here, detached from it all. Don’t worry, though - I was pretty surprised as well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Coming to Shiro, as Keith had already explained, had not been an option, too much at stake for all of them. And Shiro, who knows that he had been in the thick of it all back then, pretense and panic attacks and PTSD, doesn’t know how he might have reacted. Maybe it just would have made everything worse for everyone involved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what was your plan coming here,” Lance turns the question on Shiro, eyeing him as though he were trying to find clues on his face. “You ditch Curtis and take a reverse honeymoon in the South?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, no,” Shiro says. “Um. I needed… some time to think about things. I’ve spent the past few months traveling through Mexico.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At that, finally, Lance looks surprised. “Huh? Months? How come this is the first time I’m hearing about this? Pidge never mentioned anything. What about the Garrison?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Shiro says, feeling awful again. “If the Holts know I left at all, then they probably don’t know the exact reasons. My decision to leave was a bit of a spur of the moment thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just like marrying Curtis, really, but he doesn’t need to point that out. Maybe Lance understands  it anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you left? Like, for good?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Shiro says. “It’s more of a sabbatical.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got a divorce, packed your bags, didn’t really tell anyone, but have been traveling in a foreign country for months?” Lance summarizes. “Yeah, sure, that sounds like any old sabbatical.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, this conversation feels a little like Shiro’s therapy sessions, just a fair bit more scathing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you are planning to go back?” Lance prods. “How much time do you even have left? I mean, they will take you back with open arms in any case, I imagine, but still. Did you have any plan at all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not… really,” Shiro admits. “Originally, I didn’t even mean to leave the US. Not having a plan was… kind of the only plan I had.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lance barks out a laugh. “So what you are telling is suddenly you are the swashbuckling daredevil who doesn’t think before he acts and Keith is the cautious one who never makes a decision without making pro and contra lists and stuff?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess so,” Shiro says quietly, watching as the waiter returns and places Lance’s order on the table. Lance takes a sip of his espresso but pushes the plate of churros toward Shiro, a silent invitation to take one. Shiro hesitates for a moment but then accepts, taking it as a small act of reconciliation between them. The sugar is welcome but still crunches between his teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, they sit in silence, eating the churros, sipping their beverages. The rustle and bustle continues around them, the waiter whizzing between the café tables, people chatting and laughing together, cars drinking by, a small dog barking somewhere further down the road. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro ruminates. When he left the States, he didn’t think of himself as some voyager setting out on a journey. Instead, he was more like a leaf in the wind, getting tossed around, without any real agency of his own. The decision to try and rekindle his bonds with his friends had been his first real attempt of maneuvering his life in a specific direction in a while. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Getting therapy had been about keeping it together, and leaving Curtis about cutting himself loose. But now, </span>
  <em>
    <span>this,</span>
  </em>
  <span> is him moving forward. It is both daunting and liberating at the same time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And finding out about Kairi is not a roadblock. It’s a crossroads.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Keith said… he’d let me part of their lives,” he says tentatively, closely watching Lance’s face. “But… I don’t know it that would just make him resent me more. Too little, too late.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lance’s lips pinch, his eyebrow cocks up. He sets his tiny cup down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me make one thing clear, Shiro,” he says. If the churros are sugar-coated, his words certainly aren’t. “Keith doesn’t need you, and Kairi doesn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> you. You could fall off the face of the Earth, and it wouldn’t even  make a difference. But Keith is a helluva good guy. You’ve royally fucked him over, but he still thinks you deserve another chance. But to me? It’s one strike and you’re out. So if you decide to stick around, you better not half-ass it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not planning on-” Shiro tries to object, but Lance just cuts him off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we already established that you are pretty crap at planning anything,” he says, pushing his chair back and standing up, pulling a slim wallet from his pocket and tossing a bill onto the table. He looks irritated again, like he did when he first saw Shiro at the house and when he came to meet him here.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In any case,” he continues. “I want you to think about all of this. Properly. This is not your redemption arc. Keith doesn’t owe you shit. Not anymore. So if you have even a shred of doubt about this whole thing, I want you to get on your bike and be on your way. But if you’re ready,” - and this is where Lance pauses, the harsh line of his mouth softening. “We’ll be glad to have you back.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s important to take responsibility for our actions, Shiro,” Doctor Kapoor tells him later that day. “But it’s just as important to not fall back into old habits and just live for the sake of others. Don’t walk into this expecting that it will magically heal you and your relationships. But you also should not view it as some form of punishment or repentance. Take it for what it is: a new challenge. Does that intimidate or excite you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Both,” Shiro says truthfully and Doctor Kapoor smiles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Shiro returns to the McClain evidence, it is already getting dark. He lands his hoverbike, jogs up the stairs to the porch and raps his knuckles on the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When it opens, Keith is standing in front of him once more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am ready,” Shiro promises.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>↔</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Not to happy with this chapter but I guess that's because I split it from the last and it turned into more of a segue. There may also not have been any punching, but this ain't the last time Lance is gonna give Shiro an earful.</p><p>I don't really have the next chapter fully planned yet so maybe it will take me a bit longer to get it out.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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